The Negro Motorist Green-Book. V. H. Green, 1946. Periodical. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016298176/.
This photograph offers a unique perspective on the way(s) that members of the African American community across the United States communicated and shared information regarding such important topics as funding for a college education during the post–World War II, Jim Crow era. The photograph provides viewers with a glimpse of the complex issues that members of the African American community faced in terms of discrimination in education, and also how members of this community worked together to circumvent them. This photograph also offers viewers an opportunity to learn more about how the GI Bill’s funding for veterans to attend college affected access to institutions of higher education for former military members, both as a whole and especially for African American veterans. The photograph can also serve as a study of stories, communities, and histories affected by racism and of the communal efforts to work together across geographical expanses to overcome those barriers.
This is one image in a collection of images for The Negro Motorist Green-Book. This page focuses on funding for African Americans who wish to attend institutions of higher learning.
The Negro Motorist’s Green-Book is “An annual guidebook for African-American road trippers founded and published by New York City mailman Victor Hugo Green from 1936 to 1967. From a New York-focused first edition published in 1936, Green expanded the work to cover much of North America. The Green Book became ‘the bible of black travel’ during the era of Jim Crow laws, when open and often legally prescribed discrimination against African Americans and other non-whites was widespread. Green wrote this guide to identify services and places relatively friendly to African-Americans so they could find lodgings, businesses, and gas stations that would serve them along the road. It was little known outside the African-American community. Shortly after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed the types of racial discrimination that made the Green Book necessary, publication ceased and it fell into obscurity” (Library of Congress). The sixth image in this collection for the 1946 version of the book offers readers specific information regarding funding for Black students who wish to pursue a college education.
- How does this image of The Negro Motorist Green-Book shape our understanding of the ways marginalized communities, namely African Americans, created safety measures for each other across the United States in the Jim Crow era?
- What does this photo reveal to readers about how racial discrimination affected the African American community, particularly in terms of travel, in the post–World War II, Jim Crow era?
- How does this image of The Negro Motorist Green-Book demonstrate the power of nonviolent acts of resistance?
New York State Next Generation Learning Standards for ELA
11-12R3: “. . . In informational texts, analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop. (RI)”
- Students can analyze the connotative and denotative elements of the handbook’s description of the appeal for funding for African Americans to attend college and how it connects to combating Jim Crow laws.
11-12R9: “. . . Make connections to other texts, ideas, cultural perspectives, eras, and personal experiences. (RI&RL)”
- Students can compare this image with other primary-source images in The Negro Motorist Green-Book. They can also compare the information in The Negro Motorist Green Book with current that found in other (print or online) travel guides created by and for African American travelers.
- This image would pair well with August Wilson’s Fences, especially the scenes where Troy, Rose, and Cory argue about Cory’s potential football scholarship.
- This image can work well with historical documents such as the Emancipation Proclamation and Jim Crow laws. Students can work in pairs or small groups to identify why The Negro Motorist Green-Book was needed after the Emancipation Proclamation, especially during the Jim Crow era.
- The image could be challenged for its connection to the atrocious history of segregation in America. The image highlights the racism, social struggles, and literal dangers African Americans faced in the years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights era.
Links to resources for approaching those topics:
- The Smithsonian has an online exhibition about the thirty-year-plus history of The Negro Motorist Green-Book. The exhibition provides readers and viewers with an interactive experience to better understand the historical context of the book’s impact on travel and business for African Americans in the Jim Crow era. The “Share Your Story” link includes several first-person accounts of people’s experiences with The Negro Motorist Green-Book.
- The National Endowment for the Humanities offers guiding questions, lesson plans, and other resources to help educators with teaching their students about The Negro Motorist Green-Book.
- At the Bus Station in Durham North Carolina is a photograph from the Jim Crow era. It features an African American man standing below signs indicating segregated restrooms and waiting areas at a bus station. https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3c25806/
- Image 8 of The Negro Traveler’s Green Book shows the foreword, which provides an explanation of the book and its purpose of serving African American travelers and community members. https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcscd.00104592867/?sp=8&r=-0.651,0.111,2.303,1.087,0
- Yes! Magazine ran a story about recent efforts to preserve Black historical sites, namely those associated with recreation and joy. The story offers readers a twenty-first-century activist take on the social significance of these resorts and recreational areas for African Americans during the Jim Crow era. It is a strong resource for centering joy as resistance. These resorts also likely appeared in copies of The Negro Motorist Green-Book. https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2021/06/24/preserving-black-historical-resorts-is-a-radical-act
- In February 2024, Travel Weekly published an article titled “A Green Book for Our Times,” which offers readers a glimpse into twenty-first-century iterations of The Negro Motorist Green-Book. It includes discussion of a rise in African American travelers being confronted with blatant racism. This article highlights the call from African American folks to find safe means of travel and safe destinations. https://www.travelweekly.com/Nadia-Sparkle-Henry/A-Green-Book-for-our-times