How Did the 'Green Book' Change Life for Black Travelers?

I'm Lauren Boglebom. When author and playwright Calvin Alexander Ramsey was growing up in Baltimore in the nineteen fifties, he never really questioned why his family, like all other black families he knew, would leave for vacation car trips at two or three in the morning, and he never thought twice about the fact that the family always slept at private homes instead of hotels, used to the side of the road as a restroom, and packed their own food

with them for the length of the journey. Only years later did Ramsey realize that his parents avoided restaurants, gas stations, and hotels in order to protect him from the racist degradations and very real dangers of traveling while black in nineteen fifties America. Until the nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Act formally ended segregation and made it a crime to discriminate on the basis of skin color, the tradition of the Great American road trip was very different for families

of color. Black motorists traveling outside of major city centers had no way of knowing whether the local service station would sell gas or if there were any restaurants serving black customers within a hundred mile radius. In nineteen thirty six, a black mailman living in Harlem, New York, decided to do something about it. Inspired by Jewish publications that listed safe places for Jewish travelers to eat and sleep on the road, Victor Hugo Green published the first edition of

the Green Book. Inside the pages of the Green Book, black travelers could find state by state listings of hotels and private tourist homes to spend the night, plus restaurants, barbershops,

service stations, and stores where their business was welcome. Calvin Alexander Ramsay, who wrote a popular children's book in two called Ruth and the Green Book, as well as a play about the Green Book, explains that Green relied on a network of fellow blackmailmen across the country to compile listings of businesses and private residents, and then mailed addresses back to Green's wife and Harlem, who would add them

to the always expanding publication. A new edition of the Green Book was published every year from nineteen thirty six through nineteen sixty four and sold at black owned ESSO service stations. The Green Book was a lifeline for black travelers, many of whom carried fresh memories of humiliation at the hands of white business owners. And not only in the Jim Crow South, Plenty of northern and western towns and cities had sundown laws stating that no black person should

be found within the city limits after nightfall. Conducting interviews for a forthcoming documentary on The Green Book, Ramsey spoke to a woman who, as a little girl on a family road trip through Florida in the early nineteen fifties, suddenly became ill and needed a place to rest. Ramsey said her father went to three or four different hotels

and motels and they turned him away. He said, my daughter is really ill and needs a bed to rest peacefully for a while, and they all said no. She remembers it was the first time she had ever seen in her father cry. The Green Book was created to ensure that other black families didn't have to endure such dehumanizing treatment in an age when many white business owners

felt it was perfectly acceptable to refuse black patrons. Flipping through the nineteen forty edition, there are paid advertisements from black owned businesses, in addition to detailed listings for every major city in each state. In some locals, options were limited. South Dakota, for example, only had two listings, a service station and the private tourist home of Mrs J. Moxley.

Included in the forty eight page booklet is a letter from a grateful reader named William Smith from Hackensack, New Jersey, who wrote, we earnestly believe the Green Book will mean as much, if not more, to us, as the Triple A means to the white race. Ramsay explains that roadside assistance organizations like Triple A often didn't accept black members, and that savvy black travelers would bring along extra fan

belts and spark plugs for long journeys. Edition of the Green Book starts with a section on automotive preparedness and how to keep a car up and running. Victor Green's publication opened up America's roads and highways to millions of

black families. He died in nineteen sixty four, years shy of the passing of the Civil Rights Act, a moment he had long awaited, Green wrote in the introduction to the edition, there will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. 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, she'll continue to publish this information for your convenience each year. Today's episode was written by Dave Rouse and published by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com.