Right now, it's time for the Way Black History Fact. And today's Way Black History Fact is sponsored by Underground Beach Club. From Streets to the Beach with the latest in beachwab visit Underground Beach Club dot com. Today's reading comes from history dot com and we're pull it from History dot com. This man talk to them. It's just so clean and so right there. You don't got to do nothing. It's not Qan Rams' opinion. Ready to read dot com. That's what they own, all right. Uh. The
green Book Black Travelers Guide to Jim Crow America. Though for those that didn't know, we're about to share. For nearly thirty years, a guide called the Negro Motorist green Book provided African Americans with advice on safe places to eat and sleep when they traveled through the Jimcrow era United States. Quote. 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. But then we can go wherever we please and without embarrassment unquote. To believe the author of that quote thought that that day would have come and gone already, we are still trying to get there. Well, okay, let me keep you going. That was how the authors of the Negro Motors Green Book ended the introduction to their nineteen
forty eight edition and the pages that followed. They provided a rundown of hotels, guesthouses, and service stations, as well as drugstores, taverns, barbershops, and restaurants that were known to be safe ports of call for African American travelers. The Green Book listed establishments in segregationist strongholds such as Alabama and Mississippi, but its reach also extended to Connecticut. From Connecticut to California, any place where its readers might face
prejudice or danger because of their skin color. With Jim Crow still looming over much of the country, a model on the guid's cover also doubled as a warning carry your Green Book with you, you may need it. First published in nineteen thirty six, the Green Book was the brainchild of Harlem based postal carrier named Victor Hugo Green. Like most African Americans in the mid twentieth century, Green had grown weary of the discrimination black space whenever they
ventured outside their neighborhoods. Rates of car ownership had exploded in the New Years before and after World War Two, but the lure of the interstate was also fraught with a risk. For African Americans. White's only policies meant that black travelers couldn't find safe spaces to eat and sleep, and so called sundown towns or municipalities that banned blacks
after dark were scattered across the country. As the forward of the nineteen fifty six edition of the Green Book noted, the white traveler has no difficulty in getting accommodations but the negro. But with the Negroes it has been different. Sorry. Inspired by early books published for Jewish audiences, Green developed a guide to help Black Americans indulgent travel without fear.
The first edition of his Green Book only covered hotels and restaurants in the New York area, but he soon expanded its scope by gathering field reports from fellow poster carriers and offering cash payments to readers who sent in useful information. By the early nineteen forties, the Green Book boasted thousands of establishments across the country, all of them either black owned or verified to be non discriminatory. The nineteen forty nine guide encouraged motorists passing through Denver to
stop for a bite at the dew Drop. In I was looking for a bar. In Atlanta area were told to dry the Yeah Man, Sportsman Smoke Shop or Butler's. In Richmond, Virginia, rest A Bit was the go to spot for a ladies beauty parlor. The Green Books listings were organized by state and city, with the vast majority located in major metropolis is such as Chicago and Detroit.
Motown or more remote places had fewer options. Alaska only had a loan entry in the nineteen sixty guide, but even in cities with no black friend the hotels, the book often listed the address of homeowners who were willing to rent rooms, and nineteen fifty four it suggested that visitors to a tiny Roswell, New Mexico town should stay
at the home of a missus Mary Collins. I want you to check out the movie Green Book for more on this, or checkout history dot com the rest of this article, because obviously we can't finish it, but this is a fascinating piece of American history. I don't even want to call it black history because it's funny how we teach that American history is American history. But I want you to check out more on this, so please yep.