Unsung History30 Jan 2023

The Green Book

In 1936, Victor Hugo Green published the first edition of what he called The Negro Motorist Green Book, a 16-page listing of businesses in the New York metropolitan area that would welcome African American customers. By its final printing in 1966, the Green Book had gone international, with a 100-page book that included not just friendly businesses throughout the United States but also hotels and resorts that would be safe for African American travelers in Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and Africa, along with a list of currency exchange rates.

Joining me this week to help us learn more about why African American travelers needed the Green Book and how Victor Green and his family created such an important and long-lasting publication is award-winning television and radio broadcaster and financial educator Alvin Hall, author of the new book, Driving the Green Book: A Road Trip Through the Living History of Black Resistance.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The musical interlude and music under the outro is: "Whiskey on the Mississippi," by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 4.0 License. The image is "The Travelers' Green Book: 1961," Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. The New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Additional Sources:

“Navigating The Green Book,” Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
“How the Green Book Helped African-American Tourists Navigate a Segregated Nation,” by Jacinda Townsend, Smithsonian Magazine, April 2016.
“The Green Book: The Black Travelers’ Guide to Jim Crow America,” by Evan Andews, History.com, March 13, 2019.
“Traveling While Black: The Green Book’s Black History,” by Brent Staples, The New York Times, January 25, 2019.
“A look inside the Green Book, which guided Black travelers through a segregated and hostile America,” by George Petras and Janet Loehrke, USA Today, February 19, 2021.
“The Movie Green Book Is Named for a Real Guide to Travel in a Segregated World. Its Real History Offers a Key Lesson for Today,” by Arica L. Coleman, Time Magazine, November 17, 2018.
“The Long-Lasting Legacy of the Great Migration,” by Isabel Wilkerson, Smithsonian Magazine, September 2016.
“Sundown Towns,” by Ross Coen, BlackPast, August 23, 2020.
“Sundown Towns,” Tougaloo College.

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