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The Negro Motorist Green Book

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The Negro Motorist Green Book was an annual guidebook for African-American drivers published in the United States between 1936 and 1964, during the Jim Crow era when discrimination against non-whites was widespread. Although mass automobility was predominately a white phenomenon due to pervasive racial discrimination and black poverty, the level of car ownership among members of the nascent African-American middle class also increased and blacks increasingly sought to enjoy recreational driving,[1] in part as a means of circumventing segregation.[2]

Driving while black

Black drivers faced major problems to which most whites were oblivious. White supremacists had long sought to restrict black mobility; simply undertaking a road journey was potentially dangerous for many blacks. African-American drivers experienced racial profiling by police departments ("driving while black"), faced being punished for being "uppity" or "too prosperous" if they were seen driving a car, and risked anything from arrest to lynching. In 1948 one black driver, Robert Mallard, was lynched in his car in front of his wife and child by a white mob in Georgia which allegedly saw him as being "not the right kind of negro".[3] The NAACP's magazine The Crisis had highlighted the uphill struggle that blacks faced in undertaking recreational travel in a bitter commentary published in 1947: "Would a Negro like to pursue a little happiness at a theater, a beach, pool, hotel, restaurant, on a train, plane, or ship, 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!"[1]

Racist laws, discriminatory social codes and segregated commercial facilities made road journeys a minefield of constant uncertainty and risk. Many businesses refused to serve African-Americans, while thousands of towns across America declared themselves "sundown towns" which all non-whites had to leave by sunset. The difficulties of travel for black Americans was such that, as Lester B. Granger of the National urban League put it, "so far as travel is concerned, Negroes are America's last pioneers."[1] They were reflected in the fact that black-authored road trip narratives have often had a very different outlook from their more utopian white counterparts, highlighting the constant anxiety experienced by black travellers in the United States. Eddy L. Harris's account of a motorcycle journey alongside the entire length of the Mississippi River describes how he was "glared at, threatened, turned away, called names, and made afraid." The trip was undertaken in 1988. The situation was much worse during the Jim Crow era 30 or 40 years earlier; the black journalist Courtland Milloy recalled the menacing environment that black travelers faced during his childhood, in which "so many ... were just not making it to their destinations."[4]

To help black drivers navigate these pitfalls, African-American writers produced a number of guides to provide advice on traveling. These included directories of which hotels, camps, road houses, and restaurants would accomodate African-Americans. Among the best known were The Negro Motorist Green Book and Travelguide (Vacation and Recreation Without Humiliation). The Green Book was founded in 1936 by victor H. Green, a postal carrier and travel agent from New York City. He said that his aim was "to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarassments and to make his trip more enjoyable."[5] In 1940, he commented that the Green Book had given black Americans "something authentic to travel by and to make traveling better for the Negro."[6] It was initially published locally, but its popularity was such that from 1937 it was distributed nationally with input from Charles McDowell, a collaborator on Negro Affairs for the United States Travel Bureau.[5]

The Green Book's principal aim was to provide accurate information on black-friendly accommodations to answer the constant question that faced all black drivers: "Where will you spend the night?" As well as such essential information, it also provided details of leisure facilities open to African-Americans, including beauty salons, restaurants, nightclubs and country clubs.[7] 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 a bounty of a dollar for each accepted account, which he increased to five dollars by 1941. The Green Book attracted sponsorship from a number of businesses, including the African-American newspapers Call and Post of Cleveland, Ohio and the Louisville Leader of Louisville, Kentucky.[8] Standard Oil was also a sponsor, due to the efforts of James "Billboard" Jackson, a pioneering African-American sales representative of the company.[6]

Although Green usually refrained from editorialising in the Green Book, he let his readers' letters speak for the impact that his publication had. William Smith of Hackensack, New Jersey called it "a credit to the Negro Race" in a letter published in the 1938 edition. He commented: "It 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."[8] Earl Hutchinson Sr., the father of journalist Earl Ofari Hutchinson, wrote in his autobiographical account of a 1955 move from Chicago to California that "you literally didn't leave home without [the Green Book]."[9]

While the Green Book sought to make life easier for those living under Jim Crow, it 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 is when we as a race will have equal opportunities 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."[9]

References

  1. ^ a b c Seiler, p. 87
  2. ^ Franz, p. 241
  3. ^ Seiler, p. 88
  4. ^ Seiler, p. 83
  5. ^ a b Franz, p. 246
  6. ^ a b Seiler, p. 90
  7. ^ Seiler, p. 91
  8. ^ a b Seiler, p. 89
  9. ^ a b Seiler, p. 94

Bibliography

  • Seiler, Cotton (2012). ""So That We as a Race Might Have something Authentic to Travel By": African-American Automobility and Cold-War Liberalism". In Slethaug, Gordon E.; Ford, Stacilee (eds.). Hit the Road, Jack: Essays on the Culture of the American Road. McGill-Queen's Press. ISBN 9780773540767.
  • Franz, Kathleen; Smulyan, Susan, eds. (2011). "Cars as Popular Culture: Democracy, Racial Difference, and New Technology, 1920-1939". Major Problems in American Popular Culture. Cengage Learning. ISBN 9781133417170.
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