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

Before the Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination illegal, black Americans faced even greater dangers while on the road. Learn how a Bronx mailman made travel safer and supported black entrepreneurs in this episode of BrainStuff.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
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

(00:24):
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

(00:45):
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,

(01:06):
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,

(01:27):
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

(01:49):
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

(02:10):
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

(02:30):
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

(02:52):
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,

(03:13):
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

(03:35):
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.

(03:56):
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

(04:17):
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.