Illustration by Ryan Spahr.
“He enters the Esquire Bar. All the big muck-a-muck politicians go there. It surprises me that they let a colored man enter. He’s certainly the only one.”
– “The Blue Orchard,” Jackson Taylor
In early 20th century Harrisburg, then called “a Northern city that still practices Southern ways,” Dr. Charles Crampton broke racial barriers.
He was vice chairman of the Dauphin County Republican Committee. State deputy secretary of health. Vote-getter for power-broker M. Harvey Taylor. Popular emcee for the era’s countless testimonial dinners and confabs. Wartime patriot and tireless civic fundraiser. Beloved high school athletic trainer. Physician whose wealth purportedly derived, at least in part, from providing the “illegal operation” sought by women of all classes and races.
And a man whose reach and influence didn’t protect him, in the end, from arrest for allegedly providing the very abortion procedures that likely had been an open secret for decades. To this day, his legacy lingers in the youth he inspired to pursue their dreams—and in the tale that his story tells of racism’s power to hem in Black Americans of accomplishment.
Inspiration to Youth
“Have you thought about college?” One question from Charles Crampton changed the trajectory of Calobe Jackson Jr.’s life. Like many other young people, he was inspired to reach higher by Crampton’s example and guidance.
As a child, Jackson, now 93 years old, lived around the corner from Crampton. Jackson’s father, whose barbershop still stands at 6th and Boas streets, would go to Crampton’s home every day to give the doctor a shave and weekly haircut.
Young Calobe sometimes stepped in for Crampton’s chauffeur—Crampton was known for his grand autos driven by white chauffeurs—to perform the daily task of hosing down the sidewalk and polishing the brass doorknobs. Crampton would give Jackon $5 or $10 for the job, “which was a lot of money then,” recalled Jackson, now a leading historian of Harrisburg history.
In August 1948, Jackson graduated from William Penn High School. Though he enjoyed academics, he figured he would follow in his father’s footsteps until Crampton offered the prospect of a senatorial scholarship to Lincoln University. Harvey Taylor, then a state senator representing the city and Dauphin County, had already awarded his allotment.
“But don’t worry,” Crampton told Jackson. “I’ll get you one from Cumberland County.” Which he did, through state Sen. George Wade.
Road to Leadership
Charles Hoyt Crampton was born in Harrisburg in 1879, probably to Benjamin and Susan Crampton. “Probably,” because he was adopted at age 7 or 8 by Col. L.F. Copeland.
A white progressive, Copeland, a lawyer and Chautauqua-circuit lecturer, “maybe did this as an experiment, to adopt a Black child and see what would happen,” Jackson said. “He gave him a chance at all possible education.”
Elected class orator for the Harrisburg High School class of 1899, Crampton was the first Black student to give an address at graduation ceremonies. Skipping undergraduate studies, he went directly to Howard University Medical School.
Returning to practice medicine in Harrisburg, Crampton “immediately leaped into popularity,” reported the Pennsylvania Negro Business Directory–1910.
He led or joined everything. Masons. Elks. Harrisburg Kappa Omega. He chaired wartime Red Cross drives. He helped desegregate city movie theaters, according to Jackson. He brought renowned Black personalities to speak in Harrisburg: contralto Marian Anderson, boxer Joe Louis, track star Jesse Owens.
“He seemed to know everybody,” Jackson said. “I understand Booker T. Washington came here at his request at one time.”
Sports Icon
Crampton’s unflagging devotion to building the Forster Street YMCA was driven by a passion for giving the city’s Black youth, barred from the all-white YMCA, an outlet for sports and team play. For 40 years, he served as athletic trainer for Harrisburg Technical High School and one of its successors, William Penn High School.
Every Thanksgiving, Crampton wound up the crowd at pre-game rallies for the annual William Penn-John Harris high school football matchup. He kept William Penn players “in tip top shape,” reported the Harrisburg Telegraph. Injured students never got a greenlight to play, no matter their star power.
When students visited his office, they might leave with a bit of life advice and maybe “treats, money to buy this and that.”
“The Blacks (working) in the schools were probably janitors, and here we had Dr. Crampton, who was this outstanding man who came out and made speeches before football games,” Jackson said. “He was a great person to be around.”
His work with youth exemplified “staunch adherence to the philosophy of true sportsmanship in play as a character building essential,” said a 1947 news report of a tribute dinner attended by Pennsylvania Gov. James H. Duff and other luminaries. “‘Dr. Charley,’ as he is known to his countless friends, is a living example of leadership in the Colored Race,” stated the Harrisburg Telegraph.
Unraveling
From the early 1930s to late ‘60s, state Sen. M. Harvey Taylor ran the city and, as Senate President pro tem, much of Pennsylvania.
Crampton hitched his star to Taylor’s political wagon, earning appointment as Pennsylvania deputy secretary of health. As county Republican Committee vice chair, he represented the Black vote. Leading the “Colored Voters for Shannon League of Pennsylvania,” he endorsed Edward Shannon’s 1934 gubernatorial campaign with, “The response among members of my race has been whole-heartedly for General Shannon. We are for him 100 per cent.”
But even as early as 1928, columnist George S. Schuyler berated what he saw as well-heeled Black leaders in Harrisburg loathe to jeopardize their lucrative political connections by fighting to desegregate the city’s Jim Crow elementary schools or open doors to better jobs for Black citizens. Crampton was one of them, Schuyler wrote in the Pittsburgh Courier, a Black newspaper. They were “sheep in the Republican fold.”
After World War II, Crampton’s fate spiraled downward. Reformers sounded the “dirge against Taylorism” in their “fight against local bossism,” in the words of the Harrisburg Evening News. Joseph A. Randall, a physician and boxing manager, rallied the Black Democratic vote. He charged that Taylor’s machine siphoned money from scholarship funds meant for the city’s Black students.
In those post-war years, Taylor was pushing a breathtakingly audacious plan to expand the Capitol grounds by razing swaths of the city’s largely African American 7th Ward, repeating history from the 8th Ward’s fall in the 1920s. Properties in the way included Crampton’s own fine home and his beloved YMCA on Forster Street.
Crampton’s attempt to straddle the gap by offering $5,000 toward public housing for the displaced embarrassed and angered Taylor, as described in “The Blue Orchard,” Jackson Taylor’s meticulously researched novelization of the story of his grandmother, Crampton’s white nurse. The rift would not heal.
In May 1953, Crampton received notice from the IRS demanding $95,791 in back taxes. That November, he was demoted from his Health Department post. Three weeks later, he suffered a heart attack.
In the days before Roe v. Wade, women in every family and every beauty parlor knew where to find abortion procedures. Those with means chose physicians for an assurance of safety and hygiene.
Was Crampton one of those physicians?
“I suspect that he was, but they couldn’t really prove it,” Calobe Jackson said.
In 1951, a new Dauphin County district attorney succeeded a friend of Crampton’s. This DA did not turn a blind eye when a Hazleton woman, in a tiff with her boyfriend, told police they had gone to Harrisburg for an abortion performed by Dr. Charles Crampton.
In November 1954, police arrived to arrest Crampton and his nurse. “That’s what you get for doing favors for people,” Crampton told them.
At trial, he would explain. “I was vice chairman of the Dauphin County Republican Committee, and I should have been treated more justly.”
Crampton denied the charge. The first jury he faced couldn’t reach a verdict. In a second trial, 42 character witnesses included his student athletes, now grown into solid citizens. The judge asked the jury whether such a respected man “could have done the things of which he is accused.”
That jury also deadlocked, and the judge ordered acquittal.
“Charles H. Crampton is a free man today!” cheered the Pittsburgh Courier.
In March 1955, 400 friends gathered at First Baptist Church in Steelton to celebrate Crampton’s 76th birthday. On Nov. 16, 1955, Crampton died at Harrisburg Hospital. He was buried not in the city he devoted his life to, but in Tyrone, Pa., home of his parents.
In April 1956, his belongings were auctioned to pay the back taxes. His home was then razed to make way for the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry building.
Crampton once welcomed the 22nd meeting of the District Grand Lodge Number One, Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, a Black division, to Harrisburg.
“Honor men as you expect to be honored, be good and law-abiding citizens and treat your fellow men as you expect to be treated,” he told them, “and there will be no dividing line between the white and colored races.”
If you like what we do, please support our work. Become a Friend of TheBurg!
