Thank you for this fine article. I'm white, born into a privileged family in 1960, and grew up in Mississippi and Tennessee. I knew the Green Book well, as did my parents and grandmother. Of course I recall the days (as late as 1968 or so) when black folks weren't allowed to try on clothes or return those they'd bought. At the time, their being allowed to even shop in the store was considered a major step forward. I also recall when "ladies" at a bridge-club luncheon wouldn't eat the food if the black maid wasn't wearing gloves. Everyone's maid wore gloves at such events (Even though the "maid" was, of course, the same black cook who'd earlier made all the tea-sandwiches with her bare hands back in the kitchen that morning). Even today?....I've sometimes questioned white friends (from a socioeconomic, Southern background similar to mine) about the family maid/cook. They all coo with declarations of "love", but go silent and puzzled when I ask "Well, during all those years, did Della/Florence/Suzie ever sit DOWN on a piece of furniture, other than a chair in the kitchen, even if your mother called her into a main room to discuss housecleaning or menus?". Every time I've asked, my friends realize that they never even considered the matter, but, come to think of it?.....the maid/cook never did, either upstairs nor downstairs....nor did any of my friends ever bother to wonder "Where does she go to the bathroom when she's working here all day?".
Thank you again, David Terry
391
On a more pertinent-to-this-article note? I was surprised, only a couple of years ago, when, at a dinner party, I mentioned the Green Book.....and three of my friends (all black, well over 60, and originally from North Carolina) had NO IDEA what I was talking about. Of course, a bit of questioning revealed that all of their relatives lived in Chicago, or Washington DC (only a five-hour drive from Raleigh), and that their families had always stayed at the houses of relatives on their way through, say Southern Indiana and on the way to South Bend. They simply NEVER WENT SOUTH of Durham or Raleigh, but had never questioned the matter until I mentioned it. Not surprisingly. one of them revealed that he was aware that he had an entire, large branch of "White" relatives; his grandfather's sisters (as I recall) had simply moved to Chicago in the early forties, posed as "Portugese", gotten jobs, married "up" (to white men), and produced entire families who are readily identifiable (although they have NO IDEA, to this day, that they have an entire "black side of the family" back in North Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee).
I bear these things in mind when folks say we're living in a "post racial" America. As I wrote previously, I was born in 1960. In 2018, I don't allow myself to think that the days of the Green Book were long ago and far away. Doing so would be dangerous and immoral, in my opinion.
Thank you, Mr. Staples.
David Terry
Rougemont, NC
298
I first learned about the Green Book from Isabel Wilkerson's wonderful "The Warmth of Other Suns" which is an amazing accounting of the Great Migration. One of the people Wilkerson follows (the book uses several people to tell several aspects of the migration) is Dr. Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, who was one of the first black surgeons who used the Green Book on his migration from the American South to Los Angeles. The book is a must-read.
191
@Alice S I loved Wilkerson's book and cite it as a must read every chance I get in these comments sections. It is extremely informative and beautifully written.
79
I am a white 56 year old male. I never heard of The Green Book until recently. I wish this had been a part of our civils rights education as much as MLK, Malcolm X, or Brown v BOE, or Rosa Parks.
I say this will all sincerity because, no matter how much learns from history, perspectives become more accessible when you can put yourself in the place of others.
For example, Naomi Alderman's "The Power" taught me of the fear that women experience everyday everywhere because they are the weaker sex. By fictionally swapping places with men becoming the weaker sex, that fear became more tangible - I could identify with it - I could understand women's perspective's in our current world.
Now, having learned of "The Green Book", it makes the suffering that black folks have had to endure even more pervasive in the consciousness of those of us who are not black and did not have to suffer like that. Sure, we've learned or seen footage of specific events like the fire hoses in Birmingham or the murder Emmett Till, but each of those is a solitary event. The Coloreds/Whites Only signs may have been pervasive too, but that comes across as inconvenience and simple hate. The Green Book alludes to us of a deeper pervasiveness of what they were up against. My God, it was something blacks needed just to survive something as basic as travelling. I can never fully appreciate what those folks went through and they always had my empathy, but now my understanding and shock is that much deeper.
334
@VJR that's a beautiful and moving response to the article. thank you.
david terry
51
@VJR - You might want to read John Lewis's first-hand recount of the civil rights era in "Walking with the Wind". It is an extremely moving an account of the struggle.
64
I am old enough to remember not being able to sit to drink a cherry coke with my mom and sister in Florida. I also remember riding in the section of the train “for colored only”. I also remember being passed over for promotions on Madison Avenue. And, after living in a beautiful suburb of the Hudson River Valley, my family has been ignored and invisible by our neighbors for 19 years. Our family and friends are multi ethnic and their sexual orientation is respected. So here we are in 2019 and the Jim Crow mindset continues. “45” did not invent racism or fascism. What he did was swung the gates wide open and allowed the masks and hoods to be removed.
501
@P.Goodman,
There was an article in the New York Times a few years ago, where a daily commuter from the City to CT., would be in a crowded train at peak hours and find that he always had a seat to himself. A young professional, perhaps a reporter, he wrote of this experience where no white person seemed to feel comfortable in being the 'outsider' and his traveling companion.
The irony of it all, when one of the favorite novels read with approval and tenderness by a great majority of white residents of CT., in school and beyond was Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.
Earlier, I was in a local supermarket and ahead of my shopping cart was an elderly senior, accompanied by a young white man. Careful not to cause my fellow shopper to feel the presence of an intrusion, when nearing toward him, he turned, and we looked at each other in the eyes. A rare bird, for he was an African-American, and he looked hesitant.
He stared, and murmured a few words. I could not hear at first, and these were wishes from him for a Happy New Year. I smiled and replied 'Amazing, we are in 2019'. This is when two souls meet in passing and it is about being human in this mysterious existence of ours.
The Green Book of Hollywood is getting some flack from critics of both shades, but when a Jamaican friend of many years recommended it to this viewer, I knew that we will always be on the same page.
74
In 1963, I worked at a hospital in Chicago, the one nearest O'Hare airport. A Catholic hospital. It would not accept Black patients. In other words, if there was an accident at the airport, injured Black victims would be taken far away, quite possibly all the way to Mercy, on the South Side, even if their injuries needed immediate treatment.
187
@Blonde Guy
In 1963, and in California. It is important to acknowledge these practices are part of American history, not just a part of the Jim Crow South.
161
I grew up in the segregated South and recognized the insanity of it all pretty early. Being a little blonde-haired kid, I ran around my small town with my friends and couldn't understand how our kind, black maid could be treated with less courtesy than we kids.
My parents were Republicans in a racist, Democratic South so I was, I guess, raised in a more liberal home than most. Being devoted Christians, they could not get past Jesus' command to love our neighbor as ourselves and accurately recognized black Americans as their neighbors. I think about those times and marvel at my good fortune in having these people as my parents.
I have known about the "Green Book" for many years. As a musician and fan of jazz and blues history, the "Green Book" popped up in various black musician's remeniscences of our segregated past.
Slavery and the Jim Crow era that followed are a stain on our nation's history and psyche and are still roiling the political waters to this day. My hope for a better tomorrow depends less on politicians and our pathetically weak legal remedies than on the changing views of our children.
South Florida is a teeming stew of interracial marriages. Even the little Southern towns in the Deep South are experiencing interracial couples and their children. It's hard to mistreat black people when they are your grandchildren!
199
@Thomas A. Hall There were and are plenty of Republican racists then and now. Most of them hide it better than 45.
76
@Wayne
The racists all switched to the Republican party after Democrats led by Texan President Lyndon Johnson got the Civil Rights Act passed. I also grew up in the Deep South but in a very liberal family and although the schools were segregated the cleaning woman who worked for my grandparents often brought her granddaughter to play with my sister and me. Then we moved North and integrated schools became the norm. Now my undergraduate Alma Mater has a black female president. Times have changed, but as a country we still have a long way to go.
116
@Wayne
I agree--although I don't know how well people really hide it. As I noted in another comment the other day, it just takes four beers, on average, to find out people's real attitudes toward race. I made the comment in regards to northern racism, but, in my experience, it's generally true of people everywhere and of every political party. Here's the tough part...most everybody, black, white or other, reveals some racist attitudes after four beers (if not before).
Still, back in the '50s and '60s, the Republicans I knew in the South tended to be more liberal on racial issues than their Democratic neighbors.
It doesn't really matter. I only made the point as a comment on my parents' politics and their Bible-based stand against racism in a small town in the Deep South. They weren't trying to change the world, they just showed God's love to their neighbors of whatever color and background.
58
(Continued). After a long while, mom came back out and told my brother to drive way back to an old cabin in the back. The place was kind of decrepit, not nice looking like the others. We went in. There were only two beds, but there was a bathroom. We ate some food and got some sleep, my big brother taking one of the beds, mom the other, and we kids sleeping on the floor on a little "pallet" my mom made up from the blankets we had. But we didn't rest for long. Mom got us up while it was still dark and told us we had to leave. When we asked why, she seemed angry with us and told us to mind our own business and get out. So we left, but it still bothered me why we had to leave in the dark. Years later, when I recalled the incident, I asked her about it. She said that the woman who owned the motel wasn't going to help us because we were black, but that she begged and told her that she had kids and that her son was sick. And so she let us stay "in the back." But mom had been warned to get out before daylight or else the police would be called to arrest us all. We had to leave before any of the white customers spotted us.
Just another case of traveling while black in the early 1960s.
125
So much of our history is dark and shameful. Much of our present is the same. Racism is alive and well, huge numbers, more than any other country, are incarcerated, constant mass shootings in schools, churches, and malls, rapacious greed and economic inequality as wide as the ocean, the election of Donald Trump. To pretend that we have some special claim to greatness or are exceptional is just delusional. Our founders had lofty ideals and vision, yet many were themselves racists and enslavers. Do their words mean anything? If this is all we have to show for it?
60
I am white and I am often surprised how little African Americans with money travel, either within the US or abroad. It is not my area of expertise so I am interested in understand how real the fear of travelling outside ones known spaces is for black people in America?
24
Any group think raises concern for me. It carries the potential of leading to immoral ugliness (sin), or just plain stupidity.
Think of the limitations we've imposed on all of ourselves by continuing to carrying this superficial judgment to such an extent. That said, I am hopeful, many younger people appear to have less hangups with this topic. Hopefully they can shame their peers enough to keep it from growing larger. As for the old, well, who really listens to us anyhow?
13
In 1994 I drove cross-country with two friends, and I'll never forget the night we pulled into some nameless Utah town; it wasn't Salt Lake City, and I don't know any other Utah towns, but it was large enough to have a few hotels.
We walked in to a hotel lobby and the desk clerks immediately looked hostile, glaring angrily at us. One of us was black, two were white, but somehow I knew it was the black guy that distressed them.
We asked for three rooms, and they claimed the hotel was completely booked, a blatant lie as there were only a few cars in the parking lot. So we asked if they could recommend any of the other nearby hotels, and they looked at each other, then said, "they're all booked".
We got back in the car and I drove off south into the night, out in the Utah desert, a hundred miles to the next town, and all the way down that lonely road I was looking behind us for pick up trucks full of armed KKK lunatics who may have changed their minds about letting us escape.
So even though this incident was 26 years ago, I would not for an instant believe that this racist, frightening, vile behavior does not still exist. I think a Green Book would still have considerable value today, and I believe there are a lot of states, like Mississippi, where non-white people would rather not go.
132
This site deserves more attention.
https://sundown.tougaloo.edu/sundowntowns.php
That quaint little byway you visit now may once have been a "sundown town"--knowledge of life or death importance to anyone whose skin wasn't light enough.
32
I am not black. I was brought up, as a poor white from the South Bronx, Mott Haven in 1947, and then finally to white middle class in about 1961. I was also brought up Jewish. Early on I learned that Jews were not welcome. The were deeply resented, indeed hated in parts of upstate NY, like Glens Falls, a small community in the Adirondacks. Homes could not be purchased in certain areas and often jobs were restricted. But, unlike blacks we could blend in and hide our identity. We didn't need a green book to travel but there was discrimination.
We moved to PA in 1959. Jews were denied jobs as school teachers or employment in law and accounting firms. In Harrisburg PA the West Shore was called the "White Shore" and strictly prohibited Jews/blacks from the country club, the school district and real estate purchases. In Harrisburg the Hbg. Country Club denied Jews admittance as did the Hershey Country Club. PA allowed deed restrictions on the sale of property until the late 1960s.
In Florida, Miami Beach it was well known what hotels prohibited Jews.
Jews had to form their own clubs, and businesses as well as hide their identity sometimes changing their last names to fit in and sound like Christian names. Israel became Islin.
All in all though Jew were fortunate because they were white and many were brilliant. Jews didn't need a book. They just had to hide and blend in. As late as 1970 my wife was denied employment in the West Shore School Dist. because she was a "Jewess".
116
The Green Book provides a unique window into our segregated county with its Byzantine rules. If you’d like to find a Green Book location near you, check out our map at https://historypin.org/en/greenbook
19
The past is never dead. It's not even past...
Maybe so – but...
Never ever stop voicing the truth...
It will set – and keep – you free...
Who’d shout you down – don’t even look at them...
Look past them...
Bury them in the past. Bury them deep in the past...
This won’t make them dead. It will make them fade...
They fear being forgotten, more than they fear being dead...
25
African Americans weren’t allowed to use bathrooms but you can bet that they were the people who cleaned them.
59
There's a scene in the movie in which one of the main characters called an Asian man a "little chink." I wonder what kind of purpose does that line of dialogue serve?
13
It's nice to know there's still some Green Book's around - we might need them again. If not for blacks, for women and/or members of the LGBT community. We might very well have to use them as a template for future editions with laws like the one the then governor Mike Pence signed into law in Indiana. To think in the 21st century, 5 decades removed from the real need for the Green Book, a state in this union would allow for legal discrimination by allowing folks to discriminate on the basis of their religious whims is not going in the direction necessary to place the Green Book where it should rightly (and respectfully) be found for posterity - the Smithsonian.
61
Thank you Brent Staples for reminding us of these atrocities which much of the American establishment and population would still like to sweep under the rug. The failure to provide African Americans long overdue reparations for generations of degradation and slavery has meant that the forces of racial and religious supremacism in American domestic and foreign policy have yet to be defeated- but defeated they shall be.
31
Robert Caro writes that Lyndon Johnson as President had an African-American family assistant, Zephyr Wright, who explained how hard it was for her to travel by car back to Texas when asked to do so by Lady Bird, who wanted her to take the family dog back home. Civil rights leaders were expecting resistance and were surprised to find Johnson staunchly supported the public accommodations provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, after being moved by the words of Zephyr Wright.
88
Thank you for a more in depth understanding of the Green Book. The movie was outstanding and stands itself at one of the best movies I have ever seen. That it further elucidates the racial injustice that is part of American history makes it even better. Hopefully its sheer brilliance will also spread the word of the evil of racism.
21
This movie and commentary is important for more than its historical perspective. Rampant racism and Islamophobia are rampant in TrumpWorld. Airbnb and similar hosting sights have to be constantly vigilant against "hosts" who purposely refuse rooms and accommodation to people with names that "sound" black or Islamic.
75 years ago you couldn't look black. Nowadays, you can't sound black. Let's not kid ourselves about how much progress has been made. Some for sure, but there's a long road ahead.
41
When Roger Corman and his cast and crew came to Missouri in 1961 to film "The Intruder", they had to move from town to town. As soon as people found out what the picture was about, the welcome mat was withdrawn.
When they finished filming the Klan drive scene, they didn't stop driving until they were a long way out of town.
It was the only one of Corman's many films that didn't do well at the box office, barely breaking even. It's also the picture he's proudest of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcyWq-u0YD4
24
Take a close look at 2900 Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans in the Green Book.
The proprietor, "E. L. Marsalis, Sr." is the father of E.L. Marsalis, Jr, better known today as jazz patriarch Ellis Marsalis, with sons......well, you know the rest.
73
Another example to consider, right here in NYC, sometimes I have to go to major firms' offices and pick up or drop off documents. Sometimes a co-worker does so instead. We're about the same age, height, weight, and general disposition, but I'm white and he's Latino.
So, I almost always get issued a visitor pass from the reception desk and go right up the main elevator. He almost always gets sent around the corner to the freight entry. This is in NYC, modern day. People could make a lot of money selling a new Green Book to help avoid vicious, senseless racism, because it's still very much here (eg: Trump and all his moronic supporters).
126
It seems that we need a new revised edition of the Green Book for 2019, this time an online version to warn African-American travellers about known racist hosts when booking on Airbnb.
According to a study from faculty at Harvard Business School, "due to racial discrimination, white vacationers have an easier time booking an Airbnb rental property than African-Americans."
The problem seems to lie in all the personal information—names and profile pictures provided to hosts before booking. There are countless personal stories of such prejudicial denials to make a reservation with certain property owners.
It is imperative that this blatant racism be addressed by Airbnb. If it is not, African-American guests should follow the fearless example of Dr. Hurst and sue the company for allowing their hosts to violate civil rights laws.
83
This article brought back a lot of memories for me, one of them not so good. I am 64 years old. Back in the day (late 50s-early 60s) the family trips from Pennsylvania to North Carolina (grandfather's farm) were like an adventure to us kids. We'd help mama pack the clothes, blankets and food (hard-boiled eggs, bread, fried chicken, potato chips, sodas and the lot) in the old Chevy and start out south to visit family and friends. I never gave thought to the fact that my mom had a Green Book until the resent historical interest in them brought back memories. On a particular trip down south, we didn't stop anywhere except at a few "roadside rests" where we used the picnic tables to eat. We NEVER stopped at any restrooms, not even the ones marked "colored" because they were usually very dirty with broken toilets, etc.--we used to relieve ourselves by the side of the road after dark when no one could see us. On this trip, we had the Green Book with us, but my oldest brother (who was doing the driving) drove straight through to grandpa's. But on the way home, he forgot the Green Book, leaving it at grandpa's house by accident. My brother drove for a couple hours and then he wasn't feeling very well. We ended up stopping somewhere on the southern outskirts of DC,somewhere in Virginia. It was night and we pulled into a place called The White House Motel.
61
@Elizabeth Moore
Thank you for you story
12
I have a copy of the Green Book, the 1940 edition. When I got it, I was shocked to see how small it was. I was expecting something like the huge phone directories we used to have. No, this is a pamphlet of 50 pages that covers 45 states! There were only a handful of places in each state. How horrible that there might be only a few places where you could stop and be treated with respect.
I urge people to find a copy and see it for themselves....
67
@sfdphd I looked at a copy's listing for the state capital near me. The entire state's available food, gas and lodings for the Negro traveler hardly made two pages.
14
I have been reading Mr. Staples's pieces (and, when I taught undergraduates, assigning them to my classes) for a good many years. I hope many NYT readers have noticed what a treasure this compelling writer is. Much of his writing reminds us of the shame that Ameticans bear for the evils and absurdities of Jim Crow and its all too apparent residues.
42
It's fascinating that the article starts out with the event in NYC and continues on to reflect criticism of the Jim Crow South.
Black people experience greater discrimination in the North through today and since the Civil War.
Yankees fought the war to prevent the country from being divided. The Northern states wanted the tax bill paid by the South to increase so they would not get a 2/5th discount on their per capita assessments on slaves.
After the North won the Civil War, they certainly did not want Blacks migrating to the North and competing with white men for employment. So they instituted minimum wages and unionized. If you didn't have a friend or family in the union, you weren't getting a job.
To this day, if you look at the government unions in NYC and other blue city municipalities, minority and women working for the transit, police and fire departments, white men are paid more than women and minorities. The same thing is true of the multi-employer Teamsters and Longshoreman unions. They can't keep women and minorities from joining the union, but they can see to it that only white men get the best jobs plus overtime.
Federal Civil Rights laws forced the South to integrate its schools, even if it involved bussing children 45 miles. Today, no school district is more segregated than NYC, which could be integrated by moving attendance zones a couple of blocks.
This is still true today in the Northern pro-union states.
19
@ebmem You, ebmem from Memphis, are a living illustration that the South still doesn't "get" it. Growing up in New York it's true, we lived in separate neighborhoods just as the Italians in "Little Italy", the Chinese in China town and the Jews in the Bronx. In the 40's and 50's, we never rode in the back of a bus, drank from "colored" water fountains, or sat in segregated movie theaters; nor did members of my family ever mention being burdened with those peculiarities before my birth in N.Y.C.
Time and space prevent my correcting your errors about the origins of labor unions. Suffice to say, you are wrong although why you should think a highly perilous job like police/fireman should pay the same as a bus driver is baffling. However, let me assure you that black and white, female and male police and firefighters are paid at the same rate, dependent on seniority and education; and is a big reason labor unions never caught on in the South.
I will grant you that northern schools could do better in terms of integration, but then I don't see much more progress in the South where I currently live (for the weather). In fact, the entire U.S. is apparently still infested with the disease of racism which simply proves that we haven't evolved as much as we'd like to think, but that's no reason for you to take a bow on behalf of the South.
42
Thank you for this. Posting the article and the video helped me understand more what it was like. We need to share more and learn more to remind all of us that it doesn't take much to return to what it was...and I don't want that hate!
23
I am Caucasian, had lived (for 60 years) in rural Southern Ontario when my aunt died and I went to her funeral in Washington, DC and her burial at Arlington Cemetery. The drive took 12 hours, and I found a motel in Alexandria with a sparkling-clean all-you-can-eat full-parking-lot buffet-eatery across the street. Checked into the motel. Drove across the street. Parked, entered, and immediately regretted was underdressed in my all-day driving clothes. I was the only white person. My arrival caused obvious surprise/drama. I was enjoying my meal when a passerby up and down the two long aisles repeated: "Canadian license." I've been puzzled ever since by that explanation. What didn't I know that I would have known if had been American?
26
@Over 80. This story reminds me of when I bought my first house, in the Leimert Park district of Los Angeles. This is a solid middle-class neighborhood that had undergone "white flight" in the decade after the Watts riot and was predominantly African American by the 1980s. In 1988 I decided to buy there because it was a nice neighborhood, affordable by Los Angeles standards and located within five miles of my job. It was a predominantly African American neighborhood. When I first arrived some of my new neighbors asked me if I'd moved from out of town. In fact I'd already lived in LA for ten years. But I understood: I was the first caucasian person to move onto the block in many years. Ironically, probably because a new Metro line is now being installed down the heart of the area, decades later the neighborhood is integrating.
19
@Over 80
Can you recall the year of the trip?
2
@Over 80 You didn't give a date for your trip. If you had been a US white person, you would have known that the eatery probably historically was for "colored only" and so when you walked in, it was somewhat shocking to the black folks there. A lot of "black" restaurants in the Southern US are still somewhat "segregated" because of their history. It isn't because of forced segregation anymore, but a sort of local "understanding" about this.
16
Good and informative article. I did think that this passage, "...It promoted an image of African-Americans that white Americans rarely saw — and that Hollywood deliberately avoided in films for fear of offending racist Southerners..." is a bit of soft-peddling. What Hollywood actually did in films was pretty disgusting. A year or two ago the W.C. Fields classic movie, The Bank Dick, was on TV. I had fond memories of old W.C. Fields movies from my youth, so I began watching. But not for long. Early on in the film, a totally unvarnished, racist portrayal of a black man, I don't remember his role, served as a prop for Mr. Fields' wit. The man was bug-eyed, scared, clownish and just demeaning.
There were a lot of these portrayals in Hollywood. The Marx Brothers had them, though not so totally naked as The Bank Dick. Servile black people were the norm in Hollywood movies, if black people existed at all.
So there's that. Then we could discuss the treatment of women. Women fell right into John Wayne's or Humphrey Bogart's arms after being slapped by them.
Then sexually non-straight people. Well, that would be difficult, since all men and women were hetero in Hollywood's world.
23
It seems the Trump administration and many in the GOP would like to go back to the days when minorities and women "knew their place." It is amazing how fast civilization can fall.
Civilization is not just infrastructure, but the attitudes of the ruling elite and the general population. In 2015, I would have never thought the GOP would allow the racist Trump to be its candidate. In 2016 prior to the election, I thought Clinton would win in a landslide because who would elect the racist Trump? Well, to my dismay, many Americans voted for the racist Trump. Now, I wake up appalled every day that the GOP allows a racist to lead the country.
74
@Anthony
I know what you mean, Anthony. I still wake up some days to the shock that trump is our president. I liken it to the way it has gone for me when someone close to me has died. I forget for a while, but it keeps coming back - eventually at longer intervals and more bearable.
Unfortunately the trump pain is unlikely to subside before 2020.
40
Having grown up in the UK where there was no segregation, I'm constantly shocked by the stories Americans have to tell. And having lived in Texas myself, I've seen what remains of racism.
And yet there are some who want to "make America great again"?
Was it ever, for dark skinned people?
65
I believe you will find "Green Books" still exist for those who identify with the various LGBT letters. And I thought there were also lists of paces that were safe for Jewish travelers.
17
The fact that we now have to explain the connection between The Green Book and Black history means that the film "Green Book" was effective in completely whitewashing our history. As a child of Jim Crow era Southerners, that disgusts me.
12
@Cee Williams
Didn't the film bring the connection between Green Book and Black History to light?
10
During the days of Jim Crow hegemony, racial harmony largely meant times when racist whites weren't lynching African Americans, figuratively or literally. For those whites who were not racist, they were ignorant of the reality, or too caught up in the dramas of their own lives to notice, or were indifferent.
Victor Hugo Green did something about it. He didn't solve an intractable problem, but he made it somewhat easier to bear. Criticize it as too timid or too aggressive or for whatever reason, but Mr Green enabled more African American "elites" to travel with less fear or anxiety than otherwise realized.
Mr Staples flash forwards us to the Civil Rights Act, jumping over Brown V Board for the moment, and we find the Jim Crow structural racism falling to the onslaught of persistent humanity. Truth cannot long be denied.
Flash forward to today and we have an age where micro aggressions are considered racist, if you can actually figure out the "rules" for defining micro aggressions. That's not completely true, maybe not even mostly true. So long as we have instances of good people being suspected of crimes because of their looks or their beliefs, we still have a long way to go as a people. It's real, but very different than it once was.
Let's consider that we are the most diversified population of any nation on earth who are entrusted with the franchise and endowed with secular liberties. We're a long way from perfect, but we're also a long way from Simon Legree.
16
Very interesting article and part of history - one might also mention in the same remembrance the "Restricted" hotels and resorts and clubs that denied service to Jews. While more subtle and harder to enforce, it was just as vicious and insidious. Also just a point of information in an otherwise good article, to say "As still happens today, police officers who pulled over motorists of color for “driving while black” " is a bit of a misstatement. While black people who have committed no crime may get pulled over, as do people of all races, and a tiny fraction of police may do this intentionally, it is not a police policy or standard formal practice to do so - it should not become a standard term implying that it is.
4
@ST
You can find that in those old National Geographics from the 30's in the attic or the library stacks. The hotel listings in the back of the magazine include their various amenities, often including the word "Restricted."
14
I grew up in the south during a time when "colored only" signs were a common sight. My mother was my best teacher, making sure I understood how wrong it was to segregate another human being for the "crime" of not being born white.
For and example, I recall when she returned home from work one evening from our local hospital, confounded because she had been called out by her supervisor for calling a black man "Mr", a sign of respect. From the lesson I learned that evening long ago, I say to you, Mr. Staples, thank you for your awesome piece which I plan to share with others.
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@Judy E Your mother sounds like she is a wonderful person. She seems to have known how essential those small demonstrations of repect are in acknowledging the basic humanity of the people around us.
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@Judy E
Indeed. Under Jim Crow, even "liberal" newspapers in the South denied black men and women the courtesy titles 'Mr." and "Mrs." Martin Luther King lashed out against this insult in "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" here:
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
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@Judy E
I learned that the local newspaper in my town only referred to whites as Mr., Mrs., and Miss. If Florence Carter was hit by a wagon, you knew she was black.
15
I am white, and grew up in a small town in central Ohio. I urge other white readers to look up their home towns in the Green Book, or even the nearest city, and witness the grim reach of segregation in the North. For a black family, a drive between Cleveland and Cincinnati was like a desert excursion. Hungry when you’re 30 miles from Columbus? Too bad—also, you might have to relieve yourself in a roadside ditch outside a sundown town.
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@S. Spring
Excellent advice. The rooming houses in the Pa. steel town where I grew up housed Basie and other black jazz bands that could not gain entry to white hotels in the region. Vegas was famous for Jim Crow hotels that turned away famous black entertainers who starred on the strip. By all means, look up your home town in the Green Book - you might be surprised.
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@Brent Staples I went to Sewanee (The University of The South....a private, markedly self-congratulatory college owned by the southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church, as you may know). Even in 1980, as an undergraduate, I heard tales of Louis Armstrong's visit to Sewanee and the concert he and his band gave.....AFTER which (9 p.m. or so?) it became clear that Bishop Juhan, having heard of the visit/concert, had telephoned to forbid Armstrong's staying in the Sewanee Inn (there was no other public accommodation, there being no "town" at Sewanee..........an hour, at least, from either Chattanooga or Nashville). Armstrong and his band, having been insulted, were put up at the houses of several outraged faculty members. Armstrong had been INVITED to play (as had Dave Brubeck the year previously). I think you'll appreciate the following article about the ugly/shameful incident (and, yes, Armstrong was world famous by that time).
Thank you again for your fine and obviously evocative article,
David Terry
Rougemont, NC
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We lived in a "salt-and-pepper" neighborhood in an Ohio city for a good part of my growing-up. One of our neighbor families - Air Force Sgt. M-- and and his civilian AF wife & their kids, who were our friends, lived down the street from us. They would travel, and I believe they armed themselves with the Green Book. Sgt. M-- also armed himself with a powerful revolver. Just in case.
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I grew up in Detroit, Michigan with my family in the sixties and seventies. Every time we visited my dad's mom in Tuskegee, Alabama, my dad would drive the entire distance with only two stops after filling up on I-75 north of Cincinnati. I remember my parents always being concerned about having enough food and drink until our next stop somewhere in Tennessee. They were always so tense after we crossed the Ohio River going south.
I always hated the trip because the music became dreadful after we lost the Cincinnati radio stations, but I'll always be grateful for my parents protecting us from the realities of driving while black.
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Just watched the movie yesterday, which was outstanding. This Op-Doc fills in the historical aspects very well. Thank you, Mr. Staples and the videographers.
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This piece is another reminder of the greatness of African-Americans. No other people have endured so much and achieved so much. American culture doesn't exist without African-Americans.
I intend to watch 'Traveling While Black' when it's aired. Listening to Tamir Rice's mother brought the saying 'makes me want to holler' to mind. Hearing her tell what they did to her boy and her other children made me want to shout, to scream. All I could do was cry. I don't have children, so I can't imagine what her pain really is and I'm so glad about that. Multiply this woman's pain by millions and you have the African-American experience.
Thank you Mr. Staples for your piece and for giving The Green Book back to African-Americans.
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I learned about the Green Book when I was a child from my white aunt who married a fellow student, an African American, in 1950. I’m amazed at how few other white people were aware of it’s existence until the recent publicity around the movie.
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I posted in another article about the Green Book display at the Automobile Travel in the US exhibition at the National Building Museum. With all that's happening in the country today, we may need a new version of the Green Book.
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I’m a white US citizen who was educated in public schools from 1968-1980. I can’t believe that I only heard about the existence of the Green Book some 5 years ago. If we don’t learn history in the first place then we are surely doomed to repeat it. Public education in the US needs to be completely overhauled to become more inclusive of the experiences of ALL Americans.
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@L in NL I am your cohort (graduated public high school in 1981) and completely agree. I only just learned of The Green Book only within the last two or three months!
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The Green Book was essential to Black travelers for decades. Politicians, movie stars and people going on family vacations. The stories about what the Green Book meant to African-Americans are fascinating and very moving.
And a Trump supporter turns it into a movie about a White man. Sad.
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Readers interested in both the Green Book and stories with a Lovecraftian flavor might enjoy "Lovecraft Country" by Matt Ruff. The story is set in Lovecraft's world, and the protagonist is a member of family that publishes something like the Green Book.
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I have several early memories of traveling below the cotton curtain when I was a child. One was the need to change cars when the train from Cleveland pulled into Memphis. It was the 'Colored' car from that point on.
But another occurred in the late 50's well after the Supreme Court had called for desegregation. We were at the airport for a short layover in Greenville Mississippi, when I had to use the restroom. To my surprise and confusion I discovered that there was only a white restroom.
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@Drspock Oh, yes......that would be the case. I've occasionally asked my father (He was born in 1939 and grew up where I was born.....the small, Upper East Tennessee town of Greeneville) about the Jim Crow days. His blunt answer is "There just WEREN'T any 'colored' fountains or bathrooms downtown. There weren't enough blacks to have to make accommodations for them. If a black person wanted a drink or had to pee?. Well, they just had to go back out of town and do it in the bushes or somewhere they wouldn't get caught...."
..........which is, in many ways, just all the uglier.......(and, yes, I've noticed that he, at age 81, doesn't say "you", "he", or "she".......it's just a "they".......)
sadly,
david terry
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Growing up in the South, I more or less accepted the separation of the races when I was a child--except for the "delivery boy" in my grandmother's flower shop, who took me to school and was always so funny. My grandmother said I should sit in back seat, but I only did that when she saw me get in the car. One time in early 1950s, my family went to visit my uncle's family in St. Louis and we went swimming in a public pool. When my mom saw black children in the pool, she forbade by sister and me to go in it. Then my cousin Judy, then about 8 years old, piped up with "Don't worry, Auntie, the color doesn't wash off!" My mother realized then how silly this all was, and said "Okay, do as the Romans do." She and my dad never were comfortable with integration, but they rarely spoke about it and I guess pretended it didn't happen as it didn't really affect their lives. My kids went to integrated schools--but never had any close black friends the way my granddaughters now do.
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And also a great movie.
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Ah yes this is a particular joy still in this age. My white husband and I have visited many national parks and it is always fun to check into where we are staying. Being dark-skinned, 6 feet tall and unapologetic is shocking for those used to only seeing us on television. I purchased a house in Vermont prior to marriage and during renovations the contractors would all seem to show up with their wives in tow. I found it hilarious, apparently a black skier was an anomaly, you know like a black tennis player or a black golfer... Incidentally whenever something needs to be returned my husband would get the job. I would show up with receipt in tow and unopened package and have issues. He would with nothing and obviously used and get refund no problem!
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The existence of the Green Book further exposes the evil rot of racism at the core of the US both then and now.
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Very interesting that the Bill Board Esso pictured in the photo was owned by Ellis Marsalis Sr. The patriarch of a family that has gone on to extraordinary achievements.
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The book: “the Secret Game” by Scott Ellsworth chronicles the plight of black athletes in the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. “The Green Book” was never mentioned - I wonder if these athletes used it?
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Read Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration for a comprehensive examination of the black experience from 1915-1970.
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Wilkerson’s book is outstanding. I remember her writing about Dr. Robert Foster driving from Louisiana to Los Angeles and using the Green Book, but still had difficulties because the editors had a hard time keeping it up to date.
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Makes me recall the travails of Mary and Joseph on the way to the census. At least they got to sleep. among other things, in a stable.
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In my birthplace of Laramie, Wyoming, in the early 1950's, visiting African-American musicians and other artists, were housed with University of Wyoming administrators or faculty members, because no lodging would accept them. And this was in a university town in the "Equality State." When I was a child walking through downtown after going to the movies, a person from the Harlem Globetrotters bus approached me and ask where they could eat. I pointed out the nearby Paris Cafe. I do not know what transpired. Possibly the restaurant felt honored to have such honored clientele and served them. Possibly it closed down for others and served them. Or possibly the agent had to bring menus onto the bus and order take-out. People who long for the "good old days" have faulty memories.
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@Bob Hillier The federal government bears some of the fault: By segregating the armed forces in World War II - and enforcing Jim Crow in towns near military bases - it spread the cancer of Apartheid to areas of the country where it had been unknown. An official Pentagon history acknowledged this in the 1980s - but this remains a neglected part of America’s segregation story.
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There was an article - I think I read it in the Times, about 20 years ago - about the family of John Wideman, a Ph.D. and professor of English, writer and father of a player in the Women's National Basketball Association , who was travelling with his family about 20 years ago. He is African American and his wife is white. According to the article, which covers the 1970's to the 1990's, whenever they were checking into a hotel - with or without reservations - Mrs. Wideman would go to the front desk and carry out the check-in dance while her black husband waited in the car. The article did not say whether they ever had a problem, but the ghost of Jim Crow lasted long after federal and state civil rights laws nominally ended the life of Jim Crow.
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This may not be germane to the article, but it's worth mentioning that the great blues singer Bessie Smith was injured in an auto accident in the south at some point during the 1930s and bled to death after she was taken to several hospitals, none of which would admit her.
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@CKent Check the part of the refusal by several hospitals. Often repeated story but not substantiated. Her race probably hastened her death by delays caused by her being black
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@CKent The Wikipedia article on Bessie Smith indicates that this was a discredited rumor. It indicates that Smith was taken to the G T Thomas Afro American Hospital in Clarksdale, where she was treated, but died without regaining consciousness.
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Thank you, and bless your work!
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@WIS Gal
Very kind of you to say - and thank you for reading
4
An excellent column and another why what is currently going in this country is so appalling.
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The saddest and worst part of this whole story is that it is not over. The fact that there is still prejudice in business dealings like renting and buying homes is unacceptable. The fact that today anyone "driving while black" in the US can still face harassment,wounding, and possibly death at the hands of "peace officers" is unconscionable. Until there is a concerted effort by all levels of gov't to organize a "truth and reconciliation" commission (like South Africa did) I see no hope for peace. A Commission will allow Blacks to speak openly of their devastating suffering over the centuries and allow Whites to officially apologize for their horrendous violent history of prejudice. Without it, this insidious evil will continue to lurk just below the surface of daily life in the US.
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@Marcia Actually, racial discrimination in housing is illegal in the US, and has been for decades.
3
@me
That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
And even Donald J. Trump had a lawsuit brought against him for failing to rent any of his his properties to people of colour here in New York City.
THAT's the reality.
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@me
Seriously? "Illegal" doesn't mean it's not happening.
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My great grandfather and his white wife made the decision to "pass" in New Orleans. He was fairly light skinned, but still, I must assume they hid him. The one child of their union who looked "colored" was sent out of sight as a missionary in the Congo. Not a proud heritage, and kept secret from me until my 60's.
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@Antoinette Philip Roth wrote a book- The Human Stain- about a man who passed and successfully hid his heritage until relatives showed up in public view. Anatole Broyard was a successful author who passed with tragic results.
11
I am at the age when I remember well the race riots, the demands for equality, the desire to have voting rights enforced.
Not too long ago while driving with my 12 year old grandson a tune was being played on the radio, a tune from a Motown artist.
He stated he liked that song, a song from the 60s. I explained that during that time many famous musicians and musical artists could not stay in "white" lodging while touring.
He stated that was stupid. I agreed with him.
As we traveled through the 20th century and are close to 2 decades into the 21st century, I had thought we had evolved sufficiently to put bigotry and hate, including racism, behind us an embraced all regardless of who or what others are.
Then along comes a racist, a bigot, a hate-monger-as a president. Those dark days are returning. The "Green Book" may need to make a resurgence for those persons that our bigot in chief reviles.
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While you may have believed, or you may have thought we had evolved sufficiently to put bigotry and hate, including racism behind us, you should have checked the facts. It was never true. Your eagerness to believe it was, is part of the problem.
14
So, African-Americans weren't allowed to use bathrooms, but I'll bet the fact they peed in ditches was 'proof' of their low standard of civilization and hygiene and justified keeping them out of white bathrooms.
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@SAO
Aside from the fact that your comment is disturbing, I'd be more than willing to bet that the only reason "they peed in ditches" is because they weren't allowed to use white bathrooms.
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@N. Smith
I think SAO is on your side, and was being sarcastic.
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@Jann
You will forgive me if I don't see room for sarcasm as far as this subject is concerned, especially since it's difficult to tell whether one is being sarcastic or not because far too many people actually think that way.
18
Thank you for this important relevant history lesson. I hope more young african americans will learn more about their own history and appreciate how much black people have accomplished against all odds. So many African Americans especially entertainers and sports figures who make a lot of money tend to forget where they come from and try to whitewash their own history for white acceptance even to the point where they don't even want dark skinned toned babies. Sad.
5
Please give the basis for these assertions.
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@dupr
Think of the tortuous plastic surgeries Michael Jackson put himself through.
3
You may want to start working on another Green Book, because Trump is radicalizing his Klan base, not only in America but around the World. Just look at the Covington thugs, thoroughly steeped in white nationalism and ready to carry their white supremacists banner well into the future.
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What a unique “primary source” resource for teachers of American history — and parents, citizens, and others who want to start a real conversation about race.
Thankfully, one press is reprinting three early editions of “The Green Book.” A quick search will find it.
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@Mary Ann
Hennepin County Library System, the county that includes Minneapolis MN, has an original copy for review and two duplicate copies available for checkout. They have waiting lists!
4
Unfortunately, American today is moving backward faster than a scared rooster. Racism is once again in vogue, and white middle America is very happy in their red hats.
More alarming, the police and the courts continue to perpetuate racial injustice with a nod and a wink.
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@Carol
As any Black person would be able to tell you, racism never went out of "vogue" in this country -- and neither has the police and court's actions to perpetuate institutionalized racism.
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I grew up in a "sundown town," and my father was one of the people who promoted this shameful philosophy. He was not alone because in our blue-collar community it was the prevailing thought among white men. The women either agreed with the idea, or did not speak up if they disagreed. Somehow, some or most of my generation was able to see the wrongness and emerge from the racism. But some of the poison remains.
As late as the early 1980s, in a different Midwestern town, I personally experienced one of my black colleagues being turned away from a hotel. Only after us threatening to move an entire conference meeting to another hotel did the management relent and let my black colleague register. I was horrified by this experience, but my black friend was not surprised in the least.
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My husband was stationed at Ft. Knox in Kentucky in 1968. (We had grown up in Iowa and are both white and had not seen much discrimination, probably because our's was a university town.) While driving back to the base from Louisville one day, I stopped at a small gas station to fill up the tank. The attendant was very polite, but I thought quite meek and couldn't figure out why. Later, I mentioned the incident to a neighbor who informed me that that was a black gas station and people like me should use "white people's" stations. Segregated gas stations, for heaven's sake, in 1968.
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In 1953 I was 6 years old and driving to Florida with my parents. Our car broke down in a small town in Georgia. While waiting for it to be repaired, my mother and I drifted into a grocery story.
As I wandered around, I spotted a little water fountain -- just my size! I made a beeline to the fountain, but as I was leaning over to take a drink, I felt hands lift me up and the man said, "That's not for you little girl." He held me up to take a drink from the "white" fountain.
My mother rushed us out of the store, but not before I noticed that the little water fountain was brown and the larger adult sized one was white.
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I have been hearing that Betsy DeVos is issuing and order to require the study of "The green Book" be mandatory in all schools. Wilbur Ross is writing "The Wilbur Book" a guide to where low interest loans can be obtained to buy bread and milk. Larry Kudlow is presenting to Mitch McConnell a bill to temporarily suspend the 13th amendment to bring the workers back without pay. They already have 43 republican yes votes.
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@hfdru
Bravo!!! You've nailed it.
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@hfdru
Sad to say, I don’t even know if you’re kidding or not.
7
Thank you for this important reminder of how deep and pervasive American racism really is, always has been and probably will continue well into our future unless and until we white people can begin to truly open our hearts and minds about the horrendous pain and horror we have caused. To me, this is the single worst atrocity that has been embedded in our country's history. It is underlying the terrible mess we are in today and desperately needs to change.
151
yes, along with the genocide of Native Americans
15
Having just seen the film "The Green Book", I am grateful for the timing of this piece because there's no doubt in my mind that many Americans, both Black and white are unfamiliar with the fact that the Green Book really existed, and why it had to.
It is also a painful reminder of a not-too-distant past where open racial discrimination and Jim Crow segration was common law throughout this country, and to a certain extent still is.
Even though African-Americans of a certain generation may already be familiar with the Green Book, this is something every American should know about.
And seeing as the country is now facing a rise in racially motivated incidents, the timing couldn't be better.
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@N. Smith Trust me when I say that any black family with elders knows about the green Book.
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@docwash
No need to -- That's exactly how I first heard about it.
9
In an otherwise thoughtful article, I am left wondering if there were any white-owned establishments ever listed in the Green Book. The photos suggest otherwise, but if there were such places, they deserve mention and appreciation.
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@Barbara Ibrahim
Please take this with no offense intended.
"In an otherwise thoughtful article..." Are you suggesting that because white establishments were not mentioned and appreciated in this particular article, that it's no longer a worthy or thoughtful piece?
Your comment negates the idea that this happens to be a story about Black people who had to survive as Black people in an America that prohibited their full participation due to the color of their skin - not just by individual hotel owners and the like, but government sanctioned racism also.
The writer chose to give mention and appreciation to them at this time. Please allow them to be the heroes of the moment.
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@Barbara Ibrahim
Right cuz it's all about white people, right?
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@Barbara Ibrahim, providing a back-handed compliment insinuates that this article is somehow inaccurate for failing to pay homage to black-friendly white-owned establishments that may or may not have existed in Green's books. Sadly, that is just another example of society requiring a white presence to validate a black experience. As written, Staples accomplishes much in shedding light on the black traveler's experience during the years of government-sanctioned segregation. Hopefully, your "wondering" will lead to your own personal research as I doubt Mr. Staples intended an exhaustive researched dissertation in an opinion article.
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When seeing the film "Green Book," which is set in 1962, I was reminded of another award winning movie (American Graffiti") whose ads featured the question "Where were you in '62?" An increased nostalgia, aided by the soundtrack and cars, for that era followed the 1973 film. "Green Book" reminds us that those weren't really the good old or happy days. Reading more about the travel guide in this piece provides valuable lessons about problems that are still relevant today.
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Around 1954, when I was a little girl, I took a car trip of four or five hours with a black family. I'm white. The parents were friends of my parents and I knew one of the daughters. This happened in Southern California's Antelope Valley.
Four of us little kids were cozily crammed into the back seat, giggling and filling coloring books and reading. My friend pointed out a wide-mouthed bottle on the flood and explained that this was for us to pee into.
I was horrified! How could anyone do that in public? She explained that "we" wouldn't be able to use a restroom at any gas station or restaurant along the way. By the time we got to our destination, my bladder was ready to explode!
I was young enough to be puzzled but polite enough not to ask why. I decided that was just how their family preferred to do things.
I've long been old enough to understand the white privilege that has always enfolded me in its relative safety and convenience, leaving people with darker skins on the outside.
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@MLChadwick Yes: the humiliating - and often dangerous - experience of “Travelling While Black” has much to say about the vast reach of Jim Crow inthese United States, doesn’t it.
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