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105-440: The Negro Motorist Green Book (also, The Negro Travelers' Green Book , or Green-Book ) was a guidebook for African American roadtrippers . It was founded by Victor Hugo Green , an African American, New York City postal worker who published it annually from 1936 to 1966. This was during the era of Jim Crow laws , when open and often legally prescribed discrimination against African Americans especially and other non-whites

210-520: A Byron for sentiment, and finds out by them what he is to know and feel by every step." After Karl Baedeker died, his son, also named Karl, inherited the Baedeker travel guide business; however, he was killed in action during World War I. British nationalism and anti-German sentiment resulted in some British people labeling Baedeker guides "instrumental to the German war effort", and their popularity in

315-537: A 1955 move from Chicago to California that "you literally didn't leave home without [the Green Book ]". Ernest Green , one of the Little Rock Nine , used the Green Book to navigate the 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Arkansas to Virginia in the 1950s and commented that "it was one of the survival tools of segregated life". According to the civil rights leader Julian Bond , recalling his parents' use of

420-693: A Hungarian-born author of travel articles , who had emigrated to the United States before the war, wrote guidebooks which introduced English-reading audiences to continental Europe. Arthur Frommer , an American soldier stationed in Europe during the Korean War , used his experience traveling around the Continent as the basis for Europe on $ 5 a Day (1957), which introduced readers to options for budget travel in Europe. Both authors' guidebooks became

525-538: A Negro to drive coast to coast in America". He achieved it with "nerve, courage, and a great deal of luck", supplemented by "a rifle and shotgun, a road atlas, and Travelguide , a listing of places in America where Negroes can stay without being embarrassed, insulted, or worse". He noted that black drivers needed to be particularly cautious in the South, where they were advised to wear a chauffeur's cap or have one visible on

630-696: A black focused marketing division promote the Green Book as enabling Esso's black customers to "go further with less anxiety." By contrast, Shell gas stations were known to refuse black customers. The 1949 edition included an Esso endorsement message that told readers: "As representatives of the Esso Standard Oil Co., we are pleased to recommend the Green Book for your travel convenience. Keep one on hand each year and when you are planning your trips, let Esso Touring Service supply you with maps and complete routings, and for real 'Happy Motoring' – use Esso Products and Esso Service wherever you find

735-678: A country in Europe, Africa, the Near East or the Far East. An important transitional figure from the idiosyncratic style of the Grand Tour travelogues to the more informative and impersonal guidebook was Mariana Starke . Her 1824 guide to travel in France and Italy served as an essential companion for British travelers to the Continent in the early 19th century. She recognized that with the growing numbers of Britons traveling abroad after 1815

840-549: A few miles down the road. Transgressing formal or unwritten racial codes, even inadvertently, could put travelers in considerable danger. Even driving etiquette was affected by racism; in the Mississippi Delta region, local custom prohibited blacks from overtaking whites, to prevent their raising dust from the unpaved roads to cover white-owned cars. A pattern emerged of whites purposely damaging black-owned cars to put their owners "in their place". Stopping anywhere that

945-469: A golf course, summer or winter resort? Would he like to stop overnight at a tourist camp while he motors about his native land 'Seeing America First'? Well, just let him try! Thousands of communities in the US had enacted Jim Crow laws that existed after 1890; in such sundown towns , African Americans were in danger if they stayed past sunset. Such restrictions dated back to colonial times and were found throughout

1050-451: A minefield of constant uncertainty and risk. Road trip narratives by blacks reflected their unease and the dangers they faced, presenting a more complex outlook from those written by whites extolling the joys of the road. Milloy recalls the menacing environment that he encountered during his childhood, in which he learned of "so many black travelers ... just not making it to their destinations". Even foreign black dignitaries were not immune to

1155-444: A real meal and a cup of coffee?' We'd see the little white children jumping into motel swimming pools, and you all would be in the back seat of a hot car, sweating and fighting. African American travelers faced real physical risks because of the widely differing rules of segregation that existed from place to place and the possibility of extrajudicial violence against them. Activities that were accepted in one place could provoke violence

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1260-501: A reward of one dollar for each accepted account, which he increased to five dollars by 1941. He also obtained information from colleagues in the U.S. Postal Service, who would "ask around on their routes" to find suitable public accommodations. The Postal Service was and remains one of the largest employers of African Americans, and its employees were ideally situated to inform Green of which places were safe and hospitable to African American travelers. The Green Book's motto, displayed on

1365-544: A sharp drop in the Black population between two censuses. The earliest legal restrictions on the nighttime activities and movements of African Americans and other racial minorities date back to the colonial era . The general court and legislative assembly of New Hampshire passed "An Act to Prevent Disorders in the Night" in 1714: Whereas great disorders, insolencies and burglaries are oft times raised and committed in

1470-616: A small degree, a phenomenon he called "second-generation sundown towns." African Americans were not the only minority group not allowed to live in white towns. One example, according to Loewen, is that, in 1870, Chinese people made up one-third of Idaho 's population. Following a wave of violence and an 1886 anti-Chinese convention in Boise , almost none remained by 1910. The towns of Minden and Gardnerville in Nevada had an ordinance from 1917 to 1974 that required Native Americans to leave

1575-462: A template for later guides. In the United States , the first published guidebook was Gideon Minor Davison's The Fashionable Tour , published in 1822, and Theodore Dwight's The Northern Traveller and Henry Gilpin's The Northern Tour , both from 1825. The modern guidebook emerged in the 1830s, with the burgeoning market for long distance tourism. The publisher John Murray began printing

1680-544: A white prerogative. They risked harassment or worse on and off the highway. A bitter commentary published in a 1947 issue of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 's magazine, The Crisis , highlighted the uphill struggle blacks faced in recreational travel: Would a Negro like to pursue a little happiness at a theater, a beach, pool, hotel, restaurant, on a train, plane, or ship,

1785-446: Is a book badly needed among our Race since the advent of the motor age. Realizing the only way we knew where and how to reach our pleasure resorts was in a way of speaking, by word of mouth, until the publication of The Negro Motorist Green Book  ... We earnestly believe that [it] will mean as much if not more to us as the A.A.A. means to the white race. Earl Hutchinson Sr., the father of journalist Earl Ofari Hutchinson , wrote of

1890-717: Is impossible to count precisely the number of sundown towns at any given time because most towns have not kept records of the ordinances or signs that marked the town's sundown status. He further noted that hundreds of cities across America have been sundown towns at some point in their history. Additionally, Loewen wrote that sundown status meant more than just African Americans being unable to live in those towns. Any Black people who entered or were found in sundown towns after sunset were subject to harassment, threats and violence, including lynching . The U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education declared segregation of schools unconstitutional in 1954. Loewen speculates that

1995-525: Is macademized; it's good for the spirit to just give the old railroad Jim Crow the laugh." Middle-class blacks throughout the United States "were not at all sure how to behave or how whites would behave toward them", as Bart Landry puts it. In Cincinnati , the African American newspaper editor Wendell Dabney wrote of the situation in the 1920s that "hotels, restaurants, eating and drinking places, almost universally are closed to all people in whom

2100-561: Is still useful to Classicists today. With the advent of Christianity, the guide for the European religious pilgrim became a useful guidebook. An early account is that of the pilgrim Egeria , who visited the Holy Land in the 4th century CE and left a detailed itinerary. In the medieval Arab world , guide books for travelers in search of artifacts and treasures were written by Arabic treasure hunters, magicians, and alchemists . This

2205-408: 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 as we please, and without embarrassment." By the early 1960s, some members of the community were questioning whether the guide might be inadvertently supporting Jim Crow laws by directing travelers to friendly accommodations. The Green Book

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2310-557: The Murray's Handbooks for Travellers in London from 1836. The series covered tourist destinations in Europe, Asia and northern Africa, and he introduced the concept of "sights" which he rated in terms of their significance using stars for Starke's exclamation points. According to scholar James Buzard, the Murray style "exemplified the exhaustive rational planning that was as much an ideal of

2415-591: The English Poor Laws , which were implemented in the Kingdom of England during the Tudor period to restrict the movements of England's poor. These laws, which were implemented to ensure that municipal authorities were under no legal obligation to care for vagrants , proved to be a source of inspiration for American officials who aimed to prevent Black Americans from settling in their communities. Following

2520-523: The Green Book to avoid such problems, compiling resources "to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trip more enjoyable". The maker of a 2019 documentary film about the book offered this summary: "Everyone I was interviewing talked about the community that the Green Book created: a kind of parallel universe that was created by

2625-515: The Green Book , "it was a guidebook that told you not where the best places were to eat, but where there was any place". Bond commented: You think about the things that most travelers take for granted, or most people today take for granted. If I go to New York City and want a hair cut, it's pretty easy for me to find a place where that can happen, but it wasn't easy then. White barbers would not cut black peoples' hair. White beauty parlors would not take black women as customers — hotels and so on, down

2730-498: The U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Buchanan v. Warley in 1917. Ultimately, the court decided that the laws passed in Louisville were unconstitutional, thus setting the legal precedent that similar laws could not exist or be passed in the future. However, this outcome did not stop towns from excluding black residents. Some city planners and real estate companies exercised their private authority to uphold racial segregation at

2835-401: The United States . They were towns that practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation or violence. They were most prevalent before the 1950s. The term came into use because of signs that directed " colored people " to leave town by sundown . Sundown counties and sundown suburbs were created as well. While

2940-470: The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and especially since the Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibition of racial discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing, sundown towns gradually disappeared, with de facto sundown towns existing into the 1980s. However, as sociologist James W. Loewen wrote in his 2005 book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism , it

3045-532: The "Green Book") was an annual segregation-era guidebook for African American motorists, published by New York travel agent and former Hackensack, New Jersey , letter carrier Victor H. Green . It was published in the United States from 1936 to 1966, during the Jim Crow era, when discrimination against non-whites was widespread. Road trips for African Americans were inconvenient and in some cases dangerous because of racial segregation, racial profiling by police,

3150-424: The "Jim Crow cars"—smoky, battered, and uncomfortable railroad carriages which were the separate but decidedly unequal alternatives to more salubrious whites-only carriages. One black magazine writer commented in 1933, in an automobile, "it's mighty good to be the skipper for a change, and pilot our craft whither and where we will. We feel like Vikings. What if our craft is blunt of nose and limited of power and our sea

3255-505: The 1956 edition of the Green Book , "the idea crystallized when not only [Green] but several friends and acquaintances complained of the difficulties encountered; oftentimes painful embarrassments suffered which ruined a vacation or business trip". Green asked his readers to provide information "on the Negro motoring conditions, scenic wonders in your travels, places visited of interest and short stories on one's motoring experience". He offered

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3360-570: The Chinese out of town and then burned down the Chinatown section of the city. Chinese Americans were also excluded from most of San Francisco, leading to the establishment of Chinatown . Described by former NAACP President Julian Bond as "one of the survival tools of segregated life", The Negro Motorist Green Book (at times titled The Negro Traveler's Green Book or The Negro Motorist Green-Book , and commonly referred to simply as

3465-539: The Esso sign." Photographs of some African-American entrepreneurs who owned Esso gas stations appeared in the pages of the Green Book . Although Green usually refrained from editorializing in the Green Book , he let his readers' letters speak for the influence of his guide. William Smith of Hackensack, New Jersey , described it as a "credit to the Negro Race" in a letter published in the 1938 edition. He commented: It

3570-766: The Friendly City beauty parlor, the Black Beauty Tea Room, the New Progressive tailor shop, the Big Buster tavern, and the Blue Duck Inn. 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 state of New Mexico was particularly recommended as a place where most motels would welcome "guests on

3675-468: The Move ). He published this book with little changes for the next ten years, which provided the seeds for Baedeker's new approach to travel guides. After Klein died, he decided to publish a new edition in 1839, to which he added many of his own ideas on what he thought a travel guide should offer the traveller. Baedeker's ultimate aim was to free the traveller from having to look for information anywhere outside

3780-752: The Negro". Its principal goal was to provide accurate information on black-friendly accommodations to answer the constant question that faced black drivers: "Where will you spend the night?" The guide also helped recirculate the money spent by tourists within the black community. As well as essential information on lodgings, service stations, and garages, it provided details of leisure facilities open to African Americans, including beauty salons, restaurants, nightclubs, and country clubs. The listings focused on four main categories—hotels, motels, tourist homes (private residences, usually owned by African Americans, which provided accommodation to travelers), and restaurants. They were arranged by state and subdivided by city, giving

3885-675: The New York City area in the first edition, it eventually covered facilities in most of the United States and parts of Canada (primarily Montreal), Mexico, and Bermuda. Coverage was good in the Eastern United States and weak in Great Plains states, such as North Dakota , where there were few black residents. It eventually sold around 15,000 copies per year, distributed by mail order, by churches and black-owned businesses as well as by Esso service stations; this

3990-513: The New York Public Library Digital Collections. Before the legislative accomplishments of the civil rights movement , simple auto journeys for black people were fraught with difficulty and potential danger. They were subjected to racial profiling by police departments (" driving while black ") and sometimes seen as "uppity" or "too prosperous" just for the act of driving, which many whites regarded as

4095-650: The United Kingdom dropped considerably. As a result, the two editors of Baedeker's English-language titles left the company and acquired the rights to Murray's Handbooks . The resulting guide books, called the Blue Guides to distinguish them from the red-covered Baedekers, constituted one of the major guide book series for much of the 20th century and are still published today. Soon after World War II , two new names emerged which combined European and American perspectives on international travel. Eugene Fodor ,

4200-522: The United States declared themselves " sundown towns ", which all non-whites had to leave by 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

4305-479: The United States without being able to secure overnight accommodations at a single tourist camp or hotel." He suggested that black Americans would find it easier to travel abroad than in their own country. In Chicago in 1945, St. Clair Drake and Horace 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

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4410-563: The United States. After the end of legal slavery in the North and later in the South after the Civil War, most freedmen continued to live at little more than a subsistence level, but a minority of African Americans gained a measure of prosperity. They could plan leisure travel for the first time. Well-to-do blacks arranged large group excursions for as many as 2,000 people at a time, for instance traveling by rail from New Orleans to resorts along

4515-498: The United States. She argues that immigration laws and ordinances in certain municipalities could create situations similar to those experienced by African Americans in sundown towns. Hispanic Americans are likely to suffer, despite the purported target being undocumented immigrants, in these cases of racial exclusion. From 1851 to at least 1876, Antioch, California , had a sundown ordinance that barred Chinese residents from being out in public after dark. In 1876, white residents drove

4620-505: The United States: if not barred entirely from facilities, they could use them only at different times from whites or in (usually inferior) "colored sections". In 1917, black writer W. E. B. Du Bois observed that the impact of "ever-recurring race discrimination" had made it so difficult to travel to any number of destinations, from popular resorts to major cities, that it was now "a puzzling query as to what to do with vacations". It

4725-762: The West, the guidebook developed from the published personal experiences of aristocrats who traveled through Europe on the Grand Tour . As the appreciation of art, architecture and antiquity became ever-more essential ingredients of the noble upbringing so they predominated in the guidebooks, particularly those devoted to the Italian peninsula. Richard Lassels (1603–1668) wrote a series of manuscript guides which were eventually published posthumously in Paris and London (1670) as The Voyage of Italy . Grand Tour guidebooks poured off

4830-941: The White House. Repeated and sometimes violent incidents of discrimination directed against black African diplomats, particularly on U.S. Route 40 between New York and Washington, D.C., led to the administration of President John F. Kennedy setting up a Special Protocol Service Section within the State Department to assist black diplomats traveling and living within the United States. The State Department considered issuing copies of The Negro Motorist Green Book to black diplomats, but eventually decided against steering them to black-friendly public accommodations as it wanted them to be treated equally to white diplomats. John A. Williams wrote in his 1965 book, This Is My Country Too , that he did not believe "white travelers have any idea of how much nerve and courage it requires for

4935-558: The actual tourist on the ground; he is believed to have worked in Alexandria and to have flourished around the time of Hadrian . An early "remarkably well-informed and interesting guidebook" was the Hellados Periegesis ( Descriptions of Greece ) of Pausanias of the 2nd century A.D. This most famous work is a guide to the interesting places, works of architecture, sculpture, and curious customs of Ancient Greece , and

5040-495: The basis of 'cash rather than color'". The Green Book attracted sponsorship from a great number of businesses, including the African American newspapers Call and Post of Cleveland , and the Louisville Leader of Louisville . Esso (later ExxonMobil ), was also a sponsor, due in part to the efforts of a pioneering African American Esso sales representative named James "Billboard" Jackson. Additionally, Esso had

5145-980: The beaten path were killed, with little to no investigation by local authorities. In response, Green wrote his guide to services and places relatively friendly to African Americans. Eventually, he also founded a travel agency. Many black Americans took to driving, in part to avoid segregation on public transportation. As the writer George Schuyler put it in 1930, "all Negroes who can do so purchase an automobile as soon as possible in order to be free of discomfort, discrimination, segregation and insult". Black Americans employed as athletes, entertainers, and salesmen also traveled frequently for work purposes using automobiles that they owned personally. African American travelers faced discrimination, such as white-owned businesses refusing to serve them or repair their vehicles, being refused accommodation or food by white-owned hotels, and threats of physical violence and forcible expulsion from whites-only " sundown towns ". Green founded and published

5250-506: The book and this kind of secret road map that the Green Book outlined". From a New York-focused first edition published in 1936, Green expanded the work to cover much of North America, including most of the United States and parts of Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda. The Green Book became "the bible of black travel during Jim Crow", enabling black travelers to find lodgings, businesses, and gas stations that would serve them along

5355-411: The books by Baedeker and Murray helped sharpen and formalize the complementary genre of the personal travelogue , which was freed from the burden of serving as a guide book. The Baedeker and Murray guide books were hugely popular and were standard resources for travelers well into the 20th century. As William Wetmore Story said in the 1860s, "Every Englishman abroad carries a Murray for information, and

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5460-538: The case caused some municipalities in the South to become sundown towns: Missouri , Tennessee and Kentucky saw drastic drops in African-American populations living in those states following the decision. In 2019, sociologist Heather O'Connell wrote that sundown towns are "(primarily) a thing of the past". However, historian James W. Loewen notes persisting effects of sundown towns' violently enforced segregation even after they may have been integrated to

5565-588: The coast of the Gulf of Mexico . In the pre-Jim Crow era, this necessarily meant mingling with whites in hotels, transportation, and leisure facilities. They were aided in this by the Civil Rights Act of 1875 , which had made it illegal to discriminate against African Americans in public accommodations and public transportation. They encountered a white backlash, particularly in the South, where by 1877 white Democrats controlled every state government. The Act

5670-426: The community level. In addition to discriminatory housing rules, violence and harassment were sometimes used by locals to discourage Black people from remaining in their cities after sundown. Whites in the North were threatened by the increased minority populations moving into their neighborhoods, and racial tensions started to build. Interracial violence became more common, sometimes escalating to race riots . After

5775-413: The country, other automobile clubs, air lines, travel bureaus, travelers aid, libraries and thousands of subscribers. After Green died in 1960, Alma Green and her staff took over responsibility for the publication. Guide book Travel guides or guide books can also take the form of travel websites . A forerunner of the guidebook was the periplus , an itinerary from landmark to landmark of

5880-695: The difficulties they faced in traveling were such that, as Lester Granger of the National Urban League puts it, "so far as travel is concerned, Negroes are America's last pioneers". Black travelers often had to carry buckets or portable toilets in the trunks of their cars because they were usually barred from bathrooms and rest areas in service stations and roadside stops. Travel essentials such as gasoline were difficult to purchase because of discrimination at gas stations. To avoid such problems on long trips, African Americans often packed meals and carried containers of gasoline in their cars. Writing of

5985-569: 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, D.C., even after identifying himself by his state position to the restaurant staff. The snub caused an international incident, to which an embarrassed President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded by inviting Gbedemah to breakfast at

6090-457: 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. While automobiles made it much easier for black Americans to be independently mobile,

6195-799: The emergence of digital technology, many publishers turned to electronic distribution, either in addition to or instead of print publication. This can take the form of downloadable documents for reading on a portable computer or hand held device such a PDA or iPod , or online information accessible via a web site. This enabled guidebook publishers to keep their information more current. Traditional guide book incumbents Lonely Planet , Frommers , Rough Guides , and In Your Pocket City Guides , and newcomers such as Schmap or Ulysses Travel Guides are now offering travel guides for download . New online and interactive guides such as Tripadvisor , Wikivoyage , and Travellerspoint enable individual travelers to share their own experiences and contribute information to

6300-550: The emerging tourist industry as it was of British commercial and industrial organization generally." In Germany, Karl Baedeker acquired the publishing house of Franz Friedrich Röhling in Koblenz, which in 1828 had published a handbook for travellers by Professor Johannes August Klein entitled Rheinreise von Mainz bis Cöln; ein Handbuch für Schnellreisende ( A Rhine Journey from Mainz to Cologne ; A Handbook for Travellers on

6405-468: The end of the Reconstruction era , thousands of towns and counties across the United States became sundown localities, as part of the imposition of Jim Crow laws and other segregationist practices. In most cases, the exclusion was official town policy or was promulgated by the community's real estate agents via exclusionary covenants governing who could buy or rent property. In others, the policy

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6510-435: The example of John Murray III . Baedeker's early guides had tan covers, but from 1856 onwards, Murray's red bindings and gilt lettering became the familiar hallmark of all Baedeker guides as well, and the content became famous for its clarity, detail and accuracy. Baedeker and Murray produced impersonal, objective guides; works prior to this combined factual information and personal sentimental reflection. The availability of

6615-477: The foundations for extensive series, eventually covering destinations around the world. Since then, Let's Go , Lonely Planet , Insight Guides , Rough Guides , Eyewitness Travel Guides and many other travel guide series have been published. Specialist climbing guidebooks for mountains have a long history owing to the special needs of mountaineering , rock climbing , hill walking , and scrambling . The guides by W A Poucher for example, are widely used for

6720-485: The front cover, urged black travelers to "Carry your Green Book with you – You may need it". The 1949 edition included a quote from Mark Twain : "Travel is fatal to prejudice", inverting Twain's original meaning; as Cotten Seiler puts it, "here it was the visited, rather than the visitors, who would find themselves enriched by the encounter". Green commented in 1940 that the Green Book had given black Americans "something authentic to travel by and to make traveling better for

6825-876: The front seat and pretend they were delivering a car for a white person. Along the way, he had to endure a stream of "insults of clerks, bellboys, attendants, cops, and strangers in passing cars". There was a constant need to keep his mind on the danger he faced; as he was well aware, "[black] people have a way of disappearing on the road". Segregation meant that facilities for African American motorists in some areas were limited, but entrepreneurs of varied races realized that opportunities existed in marketing goods and services specifically to black patrons. These included directories of hotels, camps, road houses, and restaurants that would serve African Americans. Jewish travelers, who had also long experienced discrimination at many vacation spots, created guides for their own community, though they were at least able to visibly blend in more easily with

6930-490: The general population. African Americans followed suit with publications such as Hackley and Harrison's Hotel and Apartment Guide for Colored Travelers , published in 1930 to cover "Board, Rooms, Garage Accommodations, etc. in 300 Cities in the United States and Canada". This book was published by Sadie Harrison, who was the Secretary of The Negro Welfare Council (or Negro Urban League). The Negro Motorist Green Book

7035-500: The guide. Wikivoyage, CityLeaves, and Travellerspoint make the entire contents of their guides updatable by users, and make the information in their guides available as open content , free for others to use. This list is a select sample of the full range of English language guide book publishers - either contemporary or historical. Sundown towns Sundown towns , also known as sunset towns , gray towns , or sundowner towns , were all- white municipalities or neighborhoods in

7140-517: The hill regions of Britain . There are many more special guides to the numerous climbing grounds in Britain published by the Climbers Club , for example. Travel guides are made for diving destinations and specific dive sites . These have been published as magazine articles, stand-alone books and websites, often publicising the dive sites in the vicinity of specific service providers. With

7245-474: 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 Niggers Allowed". Even in towns which did not exclude overnight stays by blacks, accommodations were often very limited. African Americans migrating to California to find work in the early 1940s often found themselves camping by

7350-482: The last of which was not repealed until 1926. Outside Oregon, other places looked to laws and legislation to restrict Black people from residing within cities, towns and states. In 1853, new black residents were banned from moving to the state of Illinois. Those new residents who remained more than ten days and were unable to pay the fine were to be punished by forced labor. Although this law faced significant resistance, especially in Illinois' small black community, it

7455-506: The late afternoon, "it casts a shadow of apprehension on our hearts and sours us a little. 'Where', it asks us, 'will you stay tonight?'" They often had to spend hours in the evening trying to find somewhere to stay, sometimes resorting to sleeping in haylofts or in their own cars if they could not find anywhere. One alternative, if it was available, was to arrange in advance to sleep at the homes of black friends in towns or cities along their route. However, this meant detours and an abandonment of

7560-624: The least tincture of colored blood can be detected". Areas without significant black populations outside the South often refused to accommodate them: black travelers to Salt Lake City in the 1920s were stranded without a hotel if they had to stop there overnight. Only six percent of the more than 100 motels that lined U.S. Route 66 in Albuquerque , admitted black customers. Across the whole state of New Hampshire , only three motels in 1956 served African-Americans. George Schuyler reported in 1943, "Many colored families have motored all across

7665-406: The line. You needed the Green Book to tell you where you can go without having doors slammed in your face. While the Green Book was intended to make life easier for those living under Jim Crow, its publisher looked forward to a time when such guidebooks would no longer be necessary. As Green wrote, "there will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That

7770-429: The majority of her readers would now be in family groups and on a budget. She therefore included for the first time a wealth of advice on luggage, obtaining passports, the precise cost of food and accommodation in each city and even advice on the care of invalid family members. She also devised a system of exclamation mark ratings [!!!], a forerunner of today's star ratings . Her books, published by John Murray , served as

7875-650: The majority of municipalities in Illinois ." The Green Book also advised drivers to wear, or have ready, a chauffeur's cap and, if stopped, relate that "they were delivering a car for a white person." On June 7, 2017, the NAACP issued a warning to prospective African-American travelers to Missouri. This is the first NAACP warning ever covering an entire state. The NAACP conference president suggested that, if prospective African-American travelers must go to Missouri, they travel with bail money in hand. Many suburban areas in

7980-502: The name and address of each business. 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". Many such establishments were run by and for African Americans and, in some cases, were named after prominent figures in African American history. In North Carolina, such black-owned businesses included the Carver , Lincoln , and Booker T. Washington hotels,

8085-728: The night time by Indian, Negro, and Molatto Servants and Slaves to the Disquiet and hurt of her Majesty's subjects, No Indian, Negro, or Molatto is to be from Home after 9 o'clock. Notices emphasizing and re-affirming the curfew were published in The New Hampshire Gazette in 1764 and 1771. Following the American Revolution , Virginia was the first state to prohibit the entry of all Free Negros . According to historian Kate Masur, American laws restricting where Black people could live drew inspiration from

8190-611: The number of sundown towns in the United States decreased following the end of the civil rights movement in 1968, some commentators hold that certain 21st-century practices perpetuate a modified version of the sundown town. Discriminatory policies and actions distinguish sundown towns from towns that have no Black residents for demographic reasons. Historically, towns have been confirmed as sundown towns by newspaper articles, county histories, and Works Progress Administration files; this information has been corroborated by tax or U.S. census records showing an absence of Black people or

8295-509: The phenomenon of travelers just "disappearing" , and the existence of numerous sundown towns. According to author Kate Kelly, "there were at least 10,000 'sundown towns' in the United States as late as the 1960s; in a 'sundown town' nonwhites had to leave the city limits by dusk, or they could be picked up by the police or worse. These towns were not limited to the South—they ranged from Levittown, New York , to Glendale, California , and included

8400-574: The ports along a coast. A periplus such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea was a manuscript document that listed, in order, the ports and coastal landmarks, with approximate intervening distances, that the captain of a vessel could expect to find along a shore. This work was possibly written in the middle of the 1st century CE. It served the same purpose as the later Roman itinerarium of road stops. The periegesis , or "progress around"

8505-423: The post-war boom in automobile travel. By 1949, the Green Book had expanded to more than 80 pages, including advertisements. The Green Book was printed by Gibraltar Printing and Publishing Co. 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

8610-617: The presses throughout the eighteenth century, those such as Patrick Brydone 's A Tour Through Sicily and Malta being read by many who never left England. Between 1626 and 1649, the Dutch publisher Officina Elzeviriana (House of Elzevir) published a bestselling pocketbook series, the Respublicae Elzevirianae (Elzevirian Republics), which has been described as the "ancestor of the modern travel guide". Each volume gave information (geography, population, economy, history) on

8715-478: The road trips he made as a boy in the 1950s, Courtland Milloy of the Washington Post recalled that his mother spent the evening before the trip frying chicken and boiling eggs so that his family would have something to eat along the way the next day. 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. By

8820-642: The road. It was little known outside the African American community. Shortly after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , which outlawed the types of racial discrimination that had made the Green Book necessary, publication ceased and it fell into obscurity. There has been a revived interest in it in the early 21st century in connection with studies of black travel during the Jim Crow era. Four issues (1940, 1947, 1954, and 1963) have been republished in facsimile (as of December 2017) and have sold well. Twenty-three additional issues have now been digitized by

8925-427: The roadside overnight for lack of any hotel accommodation along the way. They were acutely aware of the discriminatory treatment that they received. Courtland Milloy's mother, who took him and his brother on road trips when they were children, recalled: ... after riding all day, I'd say to myself, 'Wouldn't it be nice if we could spend the night in one of those hotels?' or, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could stop for

9030-429: The spontaneity that for many was a key attraction of motoring. The civil rights leader John Lewis 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

9135-486: The territory altogether . Those who failed to leave were liable to receive lashings under a law known as the "Peter Burnett Lash Law", named for Provisional Supreme Judge Peter Burnett . No persons were ever lashed under the law; it was quickly amended to replace lashing with forced labor, and eventually repealed the following year after a change in the makeup of the legislature. However, additional laws aimed at African Americans entering Oregon were ratified in 1849 and 1857,

9240-437: The towns by 6:30 p.m. each day. A whistle, later a siren, was sounded at 6 p.m. daily, alerting Native Americans to leave by sundown. In 2021, the state of Nevada passed a law prohibiting the appropriation of Native American imagery by the mascots of schools, and the sounding of sirens that were once associated with sundown ordinances. Despite this law, Minden continued to play its siren for two more years, claiming that it

9345-468: The travel guide; whether about routes, transport, accommodation, restaurants, tipping, sights, walks or prices. Baedeker emulated the style of John Murray's guidebooks, but included unprecedented detailed information. In 1846, Baedeker introduced his star ratings for sights, attractions and lodgings, following Mrs. Starke's and Murray's. This edition was also his first "experimental" red guide. He also decided to call his travel guides "handbooks", following

9450-414: 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. Finding accommodation was one of the greatest challenges faced by black travelers. Not only did many hotels, motels, and boarding houses refuse to serve black customers, but thousands of towns across

9555-552: Was a nightly tribute to first responders . An additional state law in 2023 led Minden to end the siren. Two examples of the road signs documented during the first half of the 20th century include: In her 2011 article "Preemption, Patchwork Immigration Laws, and the Potential for Brown Sundown Towns" in the Fordham Law Review , Maria Marulanda outlines the possibility for non-blacks to be excluded from towns in

9660-469: Was a problem that came to affect an increasing number of black people in the first decades of the 20th century. Tens of thousands of southern African-Americans migrated from farms in the south to factories and domestic service in the north. No longer confined to living at a subsistence level, many gained disposable income and time to engage in leisure travel. The development of affordable mass-produced automobiles liberated black Americans from having to rely on

9765-625: Was an established literary genre during the Hellenistic age. A lost work by Agaclytus describing Olympia ( περὶ Ὀλυμπίας ) is referred to by the Suda and Photius . Dionysius Periegetes (literally, Dionysius the Traveller) was the author of a description of the habitable world in Greek hexameter verse written in a terse and elegant style, intended for the klismos traveller rather than

9870-419: 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. The 1951 "Railroad Edition" featured porters , an icon of American travel. In 1952, Green renamed the publication The Negro Travelers' Green Book , in recognition of its coverage of international destinations requiring travel by plane and ship. Although segregation

9975-738: Was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1883, resulting in states and cities passing numerous segregation laws. White governments in the South required even interstate railroads to enforce their segregation laws, despite national legislation requiring equal treatment of passengers. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that " separate but equal " accommodations were constitutional, but in practice, facilities for blacks were far from equal, generally being of lesser quality and underfunded. Blacks faced restrictions and exclusion throughout

10080-407: Was enforced through intimidation. This intimidation could occur in several ways, including harassment by law enforcement officers. Though no sundown towns exist today in the sense of publicly or legally excluding non-white residents, some commentators have applied the term to towns practicing other forms of racial exclusion. In 1844, Oregon , which had banned slavery, banned African Americans from

10185-497: Was not known to be safe, even to allow children in a car to relieve themselves, presented a risk; Milloy noted that his parents would urge him and his brother to control their need to use a bathroom until they could find a safe place to stop, as "those backroads were simply too dangerous for parents to stop to let their little black children pee". Racist local laws, discriminatory social codes, segregated commercial facilities, racial profiling by police, and sundown towns made road journeys

10290-466: Was not repealed until the end of the Civil War in 1865. Similar bans on all black migration were passed in Michigan, Ohio and Iowa. New laws were enacted in the 20th century. One example is Louisville, Kentucky , whose mayor proposed a law in 1911 that would restrict Black people from owning property in certain parts of the city. This city ordinance reached public attention when it was challenged in

10395-436: Was often written in narrative , prose , essay and diary style. Travel literature authors such as Fan Chengda (1126–1193) and Xu Xiake (1587–1641) incorporated a wealth of geographical and topographical information into their writing, while the 'daytrip essay' Record of Stone Bell Mountain by the noted poet and statesman Su Shi (1037–1101) presented a philosophical and moral argument as its central purpose. In

10500-465: Was one of the best known of the African American travel guides. It was conceived in 1932 and first published in 1936 by Victor Hugo Green , a World War I veteran from New York City who worked as a mail carrier and later as a travel agent. He said his aim was "to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trip more enjoyable". According to an editorial written by Novera C. Dashiell in

10605-525: Was particularly the case in Arab Egypt , where treasure hunters were eager to find valuable ancient Egyptian antiquities. Some of the books claimed to be imbued with magic that could dispel the magical barriers believed to be protecting the artifacts. Travel literature became popular during the Song dynasty (960–1279) of medieval China . The genre was called 'travel record literature' (youji wenxue), and

10710-456: Was published locally in New York City, but its popularity was such that from 1937 it was distributed nationally with input from Charles McDowell, a collaborator on Negro affairs for the U.S. Travel Bureau, a government agency. With new editions published annually from 1936 to 1940, the Green Book ' s publication was suspended during World War II and resumed in 1946. Its scope expanded greatly during its years of publication; from covering only

10815-501: Was still in force, by state laws in the South and often by practice elsewhere, the wide circulation of the Green Book had attracted growing interest from white businesses that wanted to tap into the potential sales of the black market. The 1955 edition noted: A few years after its publication ... white business has also recognized its [ The Green Book ' s] value and it is now in use by the Esso Standard Oil Co., The American Automobile Assn. and its affiliate automobile clubs throughout

10920-502: Was unusual for the oil industry at the time but over a third of the stations were franchised to African Americans. The 1937 edition, of 16 pages, sold for 25 cents; by 1957, the price increased to $ 1.25. With the book's growing success, Green retired from the post office and hired a small publishing staff that operated from 20 West 135th Street in Harlem . He also established a vacation reservation service in 1947 to take advantage of

11025-626: Was widespread. While pervasive racial discrimination and poverty limited black car ownership, the emerging African American middle class bought automobiles as soon as they could but faced a variety of dangers and inconveniences along the road, from refusal of food and lodging to arbitrary arrest . In the South , these dangers were particularly severe, where Black motorists risked harassment, physical violence, or even murder for minor infractions or for being in predominantly white areas. In some cases, African American travelers who got lost or sought lodging off

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