A few days ago The New York Times ran an article about Victor H.
Green's guides for African-American travelers during the Jim Crow era -
(excerpt below from History News Network).   Curious about its listings, I
found a pdf. of the 1949 edition on-line that may interest others on
VA-HIST. Some Virginia entries are on pp 70-73.
http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Race/R_Casestudy/Negro_motorist_green_bk.htm
 -jk

The Open Road Wasn’t Quite Open to
All<http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/130611.html>

Source: *NYT* <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/books/23green.html?hpw>(8-22-10)

For almost three decades beginning in 1936, many African-American travelers
relied on a booklet to help them decide where they could comfortably eat,
sleep, buy gas, find a tailor or beauty parlor, shop on a honeymoon to
Niagara Falls, or go out at night. In 1949, when the guide was 80 pages,
there were five recommended hotels in Atlanta. In Cheyenne, Wyo., the
Barbeque Inn was the place to stay.

A Harlem postal employee and civic leader named Victor H. Green conceived
the guide in response to one too many accounts of humiliation or violence
where discrimination continued to hold strong. These were facts of life not
only in the Jim Crow South, but in all parts of the country, where black
travelers never knew where they would be welcome. Over time its full title —
“The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide” — became
abbreviated, simply, as the “Green Book.” Those who needed to know about it
knew about it. To much of the rest of America it was invisible, and by 1964,
when the last edition was published, it slipped through the cracks into
history.

Until he met a friend’s elderly father-in-law at a funeral a few years ago,
the Atlanta writer Calvin Alexander Ramsey had never heard of the guide. But
he knew firsthand the reason it existed. During his family trips between
Roxboro, N.C., and Baltimore, “we packed a big lunch so my parents didn’t
have to worry about having to stop somewhere that might not serve us,”
recalled Mr. Ramsey, who is now 60....



Jon Kukla
www.JonKukla.com

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