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| Victor Green, Founder & Publisher of The Green Book
My family
and I recently saw the film, Green Book, starring, Viggo
Mortensen, as Frank "Tony Lip" Vallelonga,
and Mahershala Ali, as
virtuoso pianist, Don Shirley. It is a great film, based on a true story
of an unlikely friendship, and it is clear why it has been winning some of the biggest industry
awards.
To my recollection,
the physical Green-Book is briefly highlighted only twice, in the film. However, its
need is more prevalent, throughout.
The Green-Book
was actually more than needed – it was indispensable – and could have meant the
difference between ‘life & death.’
THE INCEPTION
In the
mid-1930s, African-Americans began to have better jobs, affording them more
disposable income for owning big-ticket items, such as cars, as well as for
being able to embark on travel around the country. Because commercial
transportation was so segregated (sit in the back of the bus; blazing hot or
freezing cold, beyond uncomfortable train cars, etc.), automobile travel became
the preferred method for family vacations – whether to visit family, back home,
in the South, or to discover the great United States, in all its splendor.
On the
surface, that sounded idyllic; but the reality was that traversing the open
road, presented humiliating impediments and terrifying dangers. When planning a car trip, questions would
form, such as:
And this
applied to, from the most ordinary of families to the most famous of foreign
diplomats and Motown Artists. No one was exempt, and to say that these were
daunting questions, would be an understatement. But, the solutions were not insurmountable
– especially, after 44-year-old, World War I Veteran, Harlem, New York-based postal
carrier, Victor Hugo Green, had the brilliant idea of compiling a guide for
enabling African-American road travelers to feel at least some peace-of-mind,
when planning their road trips.
Enter: The
Negro Motorist Green-Book. Victor first
conceived the idea that bore his name, in 1932, and the first issue was
published in 1936, was 15 pages long, and contained a listing of safe places to
purchase gas, find a bite to eat (or at least a place to spread out your
picnic), use the bathroom, stay overnight, get your hair done, and even, amuse
your children.
NEEDED EVERYWHERE
While the more comprehensive listings were needed in
the South, for a variety of reasons, The Green-Book contained entries,
alphabetically, across all states (and eventually, Mexico, Canada and Bermuda),
because it was necessary...everywhere. Areas without significant black
populations, outside the South, often refused to accommodate them. For example:
not one hotel or other accommodation was open to African-Americans,
in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the 1920s; In 1956, across the entire
state of New Hampshire, only three motels served African-Americans; and
only 6% of the 100+ motels that lined US Route 66, admitted black customers
– which is so ironic, given how Nat King Cole helped to elevate its tourism
status, in 1946, when he could neither
eat, nor sleep, along most of its ~2,500 miles.
To develop the listings, for The Green-Book, Victor
relied upon his own experiences, as well as recommendations from black members
of his Postal Service Union.
Mailmen were
uniquely situated to know which homes would accommodate African-American travelers.
They, and eventually, lots of black travelers, began mailing Victor reams of
paper, containing suggestions for entries. It was an honor to have one’s home
or business listed in The Green-Book, although the listings, themselves, were
minimal: “ALBANY (Georgia) TOURIST HOMES: Mrs. A.J. Ross, 514 Mercer Street.” For an extra payment, businesses
could have their listing displayed in bold type, or have a star next to it, to
denote that they were "recommended."
 Each edition also included feature articles on travel and destinations, and included a listing of black resorts, such as Idlewild, Michigan; Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts; and Belmar, New Jersey. 
The Green-Book was
vital to black-owned businesses, as well as travelers. Many in the
black community, called it 'their other Bible.' “For historians,” says Smithsonian National
Museum of African American History & Culture curator, Joanne Hyppolite, “the
listings offer a record of the rise of the black middle class, and in
particular, of the entrepreneurship of black women [who owned restaurants and
small ‘Tourist Homes’].’ ”
MY LOCAL GREEN BOOK LOCATIONS
On the Mainland of my local area, in Brunswick, Georgia, there were several listings in The Green Book, according to The Brunswick News:
" Brunswick made the Georgia accommodations list with The Palms hotel at 1309 Gloucester Street and a tourist home across the street.
Tourist homes were likely private homes or boarding houses where black families would take in travelers. In Way Cross, as it is spelled in the book, Mrs. K.G. Scarlett kept a tourist home at 843 Reynolds Street, now a vacant, grassy lot.
Among the Brunswick listings in the 1948 Green Book were restaurants, the Kozy 1305 Gloucester and the Green Lantern at 1615 Albany Street. The only commerce at 1615 Albany are rows of U-Haul trucks next to the boarded up Double Eagle Lounge.
The Melody Tourist Inn was at 1505 G Street, which is now part of Zion Baptist Church’s grounds.
Ethel’s beauty parlor at 1501 London is now a vacant lot, and Battle’s, a tourist home at 1304 Gloucester, likely sat on what is now a row of glass-front offices and stores."
 NOT AN AUTOMATICALLY SMOOTH RIDE
Being armed with a Green-Book and a map
definitely provided a safety net. However, packing backups, such as a portable
toilet or coffee can, food & drink, and a gallon of gas, and even a fake
chauffeur’s cap, in case 'you were questioned by police as to how you could possibly own a
nice car, and not be working for a white family,' was essential to (hopefully)
surviving the trip. Imagine: no Google Maps or GPS; no mobile phones; no
pre-booking your Airbnb. No white skin. No guarantees…venturing out North, South, East
and West, guided by your Faith, and your Green-Book, and praying for the least
stressful and perilous outcome, possible.
Even Victor Green knew that traveling his book was not enough on its
own, and conversely, traveling with out his book could lead to dire
consequences. In each year’s
edition, the stark warning appeared: "Carry your Green-Book with you. You
may need it!"
Spend a few minutes to experience the Interactive Green-Book Exhibit at The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture:
https://www.commarts.com/project/26017/follow-the-green-book
When I visited the Museum, during an Amherst College & Smith College Black Alumni Mini Reunion, I really enjoyed this exhibit. 
The Civil Rights Movement icon,
Congressman John Lewis of
Georgia, has recalled how his family prepared for a trip, in 1951:
There would be no restaurant for
us to stop at, until we were well out of the South, so we took our restaurant
right in the car with us.... Stopping for gas and to use the bathroom took
careful planning. Uncle Otis had made this trip before, and he knew which
places along the way offered "colored" bathrooms and which were
better, just to pass on by. Our map was marked and our route was planned that
way, by the distances between service stations where it would be safe for us to
stop.
Even if you were with white colleagues and friends, it often did not
matter.
In Chicago, in 1945, St. Clair Drake and
Horace A. Cayton reported that "the city's hotel managers, by general
agreement, do not sanction the use of hotel facilities by Negroes, particularly
sleeping accommodations.” One incident
reported by Drake and Cayton illustrated the discriminatory treatment meted out
even to blacks within racially mixed groups:
“Two colored schoolteachers and
several white friends attended a luncheon at an exclusive coffee shop. The
Negro women were allowed to sit down, but the waitress ignored them and served
the white women. One of the colored women protested and was told that she could
eat in the kitchen.”
SUNDOWN TOWNS
Although some motorists chose to
only travel, at night, because it was harder to see who was driving the cars,
versus than in the daytime, most considered that to be even more dangerous. One black motorist observed, in the early
1940s, that while black travelers felt free in the mornings, by the early
afternoon a "small cloud" had appeared. If there was no Green-Book
listing, on their current route, by the late afternoon, "the cloud casts a
shadow of apprehension on our hearts and sours us a little. 'Where…' the cloud asks
us, 'will you stay, tonight?' ”
The travelers often had to spend
hours in the evening, driving around depleting their precious gas tanks, trying
to find somewhere to stay – sometimes, resorting to sleeping in haylofts, or in
their own cars if they could find a safe place to park it. One alternative, if available, was to
pre-arrange to sleep at the homes of black friends, in safe(er) towns or
cities, along their route. This took a
lot of advanced planning, and it also could mean taking detours.
The worst were
the Sundown Towns, where it was very clear from the city limits signage, that non-white
people were not welcome, after sunset.
Huge numbers of towns across the
country were effectively off-limits to African-Americans. By the end of the
1960s, there were an estimated 10,000 Sundown Towns across the United
States – including large suburbs such as Glendale,
California (population 60,000 at the time); Levittown, New York (80,000);
and Warren, Michigan (180,000). Over half the incorporated
communities in Illinois were Sundown Towns. The unofficial slogan of Anna,
Illinois, which had violently expelled its African-American population, in 1909,
was "Ain't No N*ggers Allowed"
 Probably 85% of the listings were black-owned businesses. One of the 15% of whom, that was not, was Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe, in South Boston. Charlie Poulous, a Greek immigrant, opened the restaurant, in 1927, and with his partner, Christi Manjourides, served all races, possibly the first restaurant, in Boston, to do so. His attitude was that all were welcome, unless you didn’t like it. Then, you could eat elsewhere.   
VIPs WERE NOT EXEMPT
They may have been The Supremes, but that did not mean they did not need to use The Green-Book, in order to successfully book their tour gigs. Mary Wilson recalls that, at 19-years-old, fresh out of high school, she, Diana Ross and Florence Ballard, went on their first-ever road tour, with a regular 'who's-who' of Motown stars. Traveling by bus, with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells, The Temptations, and others, Mary Wilson was confronted by hate in the still-segregated South.
She recalled. "We were
getting off the bus, and there were gunshots, that even penetrated the bus." Much like the film, Green
Book, it was fine for them to entertain the patrons and guests. Just don’t dine with them, or use any of the
facilities.
Another reason why The
Green-Book was so essential, for so many people.
Watch and read this great feature on CBS Sunday Morning, about The Green-Book: 
Even foreign black dignitaries
were not immune to the discrimination that African-American travelers routinely
encountered. In one, high-profile incident, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, the
Finance Minister of newly independent Ghana, was refused service at
a Howard Johnson's restaurant in Dover, Delaware, while
traveling to Washington, DC, even after identifying himself by his State
position, to the restaurant staff. The poor treatment caused an international
incident, to which a very embarrassed President Dwight D.
Eisenhower responded by inviting Gbedemah to breakfast at The White House.
THE FINAL 16 YEARS
The 1951 Green Book recommended that black-owned businesses raise their standards, as travelers were "no longer content to pay top prices for inferior accommodations and services". The quality of black-owned lodgings was coming under scrutiny, as many prosperous blacks found them to be second-rate, compared to the white-owned lodgings, from which they were excluded. In 1952, Victor Green renamed the publication The Negro Travelers' Green Book, in recognition of its coverage of international destinations requiring travel by plane and ship.
In 1952, Victor Green retired from The
Postal Service to become a full-time publisher, with a small staff, continuing
to operate from Harlem. He also established
a vacation reservation service, in 1947, to take advantage of the post-war boom
in automobile travel.
Victor charged enough for The Green Book to
make a modest profit—25¢ for the first edition, $1.00 for the last—but he never
became rich. “It was really all about helping my people,” he said. At the height of its
circulation, Victor printed 20,000 books, annually, which were sold at black
churches, the Negro Urban League and Esso gas stations, as well as through
mail-order subscriptions. Here is a link
to the Digital Collection of all of The Green Books.
Writing in the 1948 Green-Book, Victor Green
predicted, “There will be a day, 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.”
Overall, Victor was correct. We African-Americans now travel the world and
eat where we like, and use facilities, wherever necessary. However, while we have come an extremely long way, we can never completely rest easily, when, as recently as December 2018, an African-American
hotel guest was harassed, for no reason, by a security guard and a hotel staff member,
in a DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel lobby, in Portland, Oregon. The two employees have been fired, but the indignity has
still been inflicted and suffered.
Victor Green died in 1960, four years
before The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and signed. It is not clear, who continued to
publish The Green Book, after he passed away.
Especially after the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 was signed, an
increasing number of middle-class African-Americans were beginning to question
whether guides, such as The Green Book, were accommodating Jim Crow
by steering black travelers to segregated businesses, rather than encouraging
them to push for equal access.
Black-owned motels, in remote locations off state highways, lost
customers to a new generation of integrated interstate motels, located near
freeway exits. The 1963 Green Book acknowledged that the
activism of The Civil Rights Movement had "widened the areas of public
accommodations accessible to all," but it defended the continued listing
of black-friendly businesses because "a family planning for a vacation
hopes for one that is free of tensions and problems."
The final edition of The Green Book,
in 1966-67, filled 99 pages and embraced the entire nation, as well as some
international cities.
Victor’s lasting influence was not only to
show the way for the next generation of black entrepreneurs, but also, to help
enable access to travel, for African-Americans, in a way that had been
previously fraught with unknowns. It is
sad that it was necessary – especially, for 3 decades, but I cannot imagine how
so much of, from the ordinary to the most famous of life and history, would have
unfolded, if it were not for Victor, and his Green Book lifeline.
# # #
Sources: The Brunswick News, CBS Sunday Morning, Driving While
Black, The New York Public Library, Digital Collection, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture,
Wikipedia
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Friday, February 1, 2019
SAFE(R) PASSAGE: WHY THE GREEN-BOOK WAS A LIFELINE
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