A REAL GREEN BOOK
Guide for black travellers in U.S. was once essential
There’s a scene in the newly released movie Green Book when Don Shirley, the Jamaican classical-trained pianist, and his white chauffeur Tony (Lip) Vallelonga climb into a blue Cadillac before setting out on a 1962 concert tour that would take them through a still-segregated United States, including potentially treacherous stops in the Midwest and the Deep South.
Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali) slides in the back seat. His chauffeur Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) takes the driver seat, prepared to leave New York for an eight-week tour. But before they hit the road, a manager slips Vallelonga a Green Book, explaining quickly that black people can’t stay everywhere and that the guide might help the chauffeur find accommodations for Shirley.
The chauffeur glances at the cover of the Green Book and tosses it on the passenger’s seat.
Despite the movie’s title, there are not many more references in the movie to the guide that was essential for black travellers in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
The Green Book, which was initially called The Negro Motorist Green-Book when it was first published in 1936, became so vital to black travellers that thousands of black travellers would not make plans without it. The information listed in the Green Book — hotels, motels, cafés and restaurants that welcomed black people — could literally mean life or death for black travellers.
Black travellers who ended up in the wrong place, wrong hotel, wrong street, wrong town were sometimes lynched — beaten, shot, pulled from their cars and dragged out of town. A wrong turn could lead to an encounter with the Ku Klux Klan. Bad timing or bad information could lead a driver into a “sundown town,” cities, towns and communities across the country, where African-Americans were not permitted after nightfall. Some of those towns had warning signs at their borders: “N-----, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on You.”
“Sundown towns were throughout the country; they were everywhere, even on Route 66,” said Candacy Taylor, a Harvard fellow and cultural documentarian working on a project about the Green Book.
“When you have that reality, you need a guide. You need something to tell you where you could stay that was safe.”
In 1936, Victor Hugo Green, a postal worker who lived in Harlem with his wife, Alma, encountered discrimination during a car trip.
He then decided to begin publishing The Negro Motorist GreenBook.
“Just What You Have Been Looking For!!” Green wrote in the first edition. “Now We Can Travel Without Embarrassment.”
The Green Book was not just for travel through the U.S. South or Midwest but included listings in the West and in northern cities where segregation and discrimination were also common.
The first Green Book documented safe places in metropolitan New York.
It listed hotels, tourist homes, service stations, restaurants, garages, taxicabs, beauty parlours, barbershops, tailors, drugstores, taverns, nightclubs and funeral homes that welcomed black people at a time in the country when it was legal for establishments to discriminate by race.
The response to the first guide was so great that the next issue went national, offering listings across the United States.
Over the years, the price varied — some cost 75 cents, others $1.50. Salespeople helped distribute the copies. Customers could also order the guidebook in Green’s Harlem office.
“If you’re travelling you don’t have to worry about accommodations — whether this place will take you in or that place will sell you food.
“That is if you’re white and gentile. If you’re not, you have to travel a careful route like seeking oases in a desert,” an ad in the 1949 edition of the Green Book said.
Except during the Second World War, the Green Book guide was published annually until 1967, three years after the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act, said Maira Liriano.
She is the associate chief librarian at the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, where 22 Green Books have been digitized. (The 1966-67 issue is not digitized because of copyright concerns. But the library has a physical copy.)
“After the Civil Rights Act is passed, you can’t discriminate on race,” Liriano said.
“African Americans could go to any hotel and restaurant and couldn’t be turned away. Once it was the law of land, the Green Book was not necessary.”
Green longed for a country where the listings would be unnecessary.
“There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published,” Green wrote in one introduction.
“That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.
“But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.”
Green died in 1960, four years before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act — which included a prohibition against discrimination in public accommodations.
Sundown towns were throughout the country; they were everywhere, even on Route 66.