The 1949 edition shined the spotlight on Robbins, Illinois, a town “owned and operated by Negroes.” In 1954, readers were encouraged to visit San Francisco, which was described as “fast becoming the focal point of the Negroes’ future.” The guide also offered travel tips and feature articles on certain cities. “We know a number of our race who have a long standing love affair with the tempestuous city of Paris,” the 1962 Green Book noted. Along with suggestions for the United States, later editions included information on airline and cruise ship journeys to places like Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. “You literally didn’t dare leave home without it.”Īs its popularity grew, the Green Book expanded from a motorists’ companion to an international travel guide. “The ‘Green Book’ was the bible of every Negro highway traveler in the 1950s and early 1960s,” he wrote. described purchasing a copy in preparation for a road trip he and his wife took from Chicago to California. In his memoir “ A Colored Man’s Journey Through 20th Century Segregated America,” Earl Hutchinson Sr. Though largely unknown to whites, it eventually sold upwards of 15,000 copies per year and was widely used by black business travelers and vacationers alike. Thanks to a sponsorship deal with Standard Oil, the Green Book was available for purchase at Esso gas stations across the country. The Green Book wasn’t the only handbook for black travelers-another publication called “Travelguide” was marketed with tagline “Vacation and Recreation Without Humiliation”-but it was by far the most popular. READ MORE: How Freedom Rider Diane Nash Risked Her Life to Desegregate the South With Jim Crow still looming over much of the country, a motto on the guide’s cover also doubled as a warning: “Carry your Green Book with you-You may need it.”Ģ014 Laverne Cox becomes first transgender person to appear on the cover of TIME magazine
#When were greenbooks used skin#
The “Green Book” listed establishments in segregationist strongholds such as Alabama and Mississippi, but its reach also extended from Connecticut to California-any place where its readers might face prejudice or danger because of their skin color. In the pages that followed, they provided a rundown of hotels, guest houses, service stations, drug stores, taverns, barber shops and restaurants that were known to be safe ports of call for African American travelers. That was how the authors of the “Negro Motorist Green Book” ended the introduction to their 1948 edition. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.” That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published.
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