How Did 'The Green Book' Work?

For decades, 'The Green Book' was a lifeline connecting Black travelers in the U.S. with businesses that were happy to serve them. Learn how it got started in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff.
Lauren Vogelbaum here. As he was growing up in Baltimore
in the nineteen fifties, the author and playwright Calvin Alexander
Ramsay never really questioned why his family, like all the
other black families he knew, would leave for vacation car

(00:22):
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 in hotels, used 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

(00:44):
the racist degradations and very real dangers of traveling will
black in nineteen fifties America. The nineteen sixty four Civil
Rights Act formally ended segregation and made it a crime
to discriminate on the basis of color, But the tradition
of the Great American road trip has always been very
different for families of color. Especially before the Act passed,

(01:06):
Black motorists traveling outside of major city centers had no
way of knowing if the local service station would sell
them gas or if there were any restaurants serving black
customers within a day's drive. In nineteen thirty six, a
black mailman living in Harlem, New York, decided to do
something about it. That's when, inspired by Jewish publications that

(01:28):
listed safe places for Jewish travelers to eat and sleep
on the road, Victor Hugo Green published the first edition
of the Negro Motorist Green Book, of that being the
accepted nomenclature for Black Americans at the time. Inside the
pages of the Green Book, as it became known, black
travelers could find state by state listings of hotels and

(01:48):
private tourist homes to spend the night, plus restaurants, barbershops,
service stations, and stores where their business was welcome. You
might be familiar with the Green Book through the twenty
twenty television series Lovecraft Country, or the novel it was
based on of the same name, or through the film
Green Book, though the film has been widely denounced for

(02:09):
its cloying and inaccurate portrayals of real life people like
black pianist Dr Donald Waldridge Shirley. The aforementioned author, Calvin
Alexander Ramsey himself wrote a popular children's book in ten
called Ruth and the Green Book, as well as a
play called The Green Book. When we spoke with Ramsey,
he explained that Green relied on a network of fellow

(02:31):
black mailmen across the country to compile listings of businesses
and private residents and mail the addresses back to Green's
wife in 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 Esso service stations and other smaller retailers.

(02:52):
So a brand that's today part of ex On Mobile,
was known for being widely welcoming of black employees, franchisees,
and customers. The Green Book was a lifeline for black travelers,
many of whom carried fresh memories of humiliation by white
business owners. Not only in the Jim Crow South, plenty
of northern and western towns and cities had sundown laws

(03:15):
stating that no black person could be within the city
limits after nightfall. Conducting interviews for a forthcoming documentary on
The Green Book, Ramsey spoke with a woman who can't
forget being a little girl on a family road trip
through Florida in the early nineteen fifties when she suddenly
became ill and needed a place to rest. Ramsey said

(03:37):
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 her
father cry. The Green Book was created to ensure that
other black families didn't have to endure such degradations, difficult teas,

(04:00):
and potential dangers. Flipping through the ninety edition, there are
paid advertisements from black owned businesses, in addition to detailed
listings for every major city in each state. In some locales,
options were limited. South Dakota, for example, had only two listings,
a service station and the private tourist home of one
Mrs J. Moxley. Included in the forty eight page booklet

(04:24):
is a letter from a grateful reader named WILLIAMS. 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. Ramsey
explained that roadside assistance organizations like Triple A often didn't
accept black members, and that savvy black travelers would bring

(04:45):
along extra fan belts and spark plugs for long journeys.
Seven edition of the Green Book starts with a section
on automotive preparedness and how to keep a car up
and running. Victor Greene may have left school after the
eighth grade, but his brilliant publication opened up America's roads
and highways to millions of black families. Green died in

(05:05):
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 nine edition, 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

(05:27):
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. Today's episode was written by
Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang for more in

(05:48):
this and lots of other topics, visit how stuff works
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