The Negro motorist Green-book. New York City: V.H. Green, 1936. 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 traveling safely on the roads within the United States during the post-World War II, Jim Crow era United. The photograph provides viewers with a glimpse of the communal efforts of Black motorists to help one another stay up-to-date with businesses and places they could safely visit and stay. The introduction also reveals that the motorists themselves could write in to the publisher and author to update the book when businesses closed or when new ones opened. The photograph can also serve as a study of stories, communities, and histories impacted by racism, and the communal efforts to work across geographical expanses to overcome barriers.
This is an example of a collection of images for The Negro Motorist Green-Book. It is a page that focuses on the guidebook’s audience, purpose, and communal creation.
The Negro Motorist Green-Book is “An annual guidebook for African-American roadtrippers 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 third image in this collection for the 1946 version of the book offers readers specific information regarding the book’s purpose of helping Black motorists find safe, friendly places to stop for gasoline, food, lodging, and amusement while traveling America’s roads during the Jim Crow era.
- 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 the impact racial discrimination had on the African American community, namely 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 non-violent 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 to financing money 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 view this image and compare it to other primary source images within The Negro Motorist Green-Book. They can Compare and contrast the information in The Negro Motorist Green-Book to current travel guides and/or online travel guides created by and for African American travelers.
- This image could be a great source for students to review after reading Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of An American Slave. This photograph can help contextualize the obstacles that African Americans still faced as “free” people across the United States and well after the Emancipation Proclamation.
- This image can work well with documents like the Emancipation Proclamation and the Jim Crow Laws. Students can work in pairs or small groups to identify why the need for The Negro Motorist Green-Book existed 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 entire online exhibition on the 30+ year history of The Negro Motorist Green-Book. It provides readers/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. One section of this exhibition in particular is the “Share Your Story” link that 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/
- Delano, Jack, photographer. At the bus station in Durham, North Carolina. Durham North Carolina United States, 1940. May. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017747598/.
- Image 8 of Traveler’s Green Book is the “Foreward” for the rest of the text, which provides further explanation of the book and its purpose for 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
- Traveler's Green Book. [New York, V.H. Green n.d, 1952] Periodical. https://www.loc.gov/item/53030287/.
- Yes! Magazine ran an entire story about recent efforts to preserve Black historical sites, namely those associated with recreation and joy. This story offers readers a twenty-first century activist take on the social significance of these resorts and areas of recreation 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 of 2024, Travel Weekly published an article called “A Green Book for Our Times” that offers readers a glimpse into twenty-first century iterations of The Negro Motorist Green-Book. It includes discussions 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