BHM Day Sixteen: The Negro Motorist Green Book

Published between 1936 and 1964, The Green Book served as a tool for blacks participating in America’s early car culture to guide them safely in their travels throughout the country.

Victor H. Green was born in New York City in 1892, and he began to collect information on NYC businesses receptive to black travelers after going to work for the Post Office in 1912. Originally published as The Negro Motorist Green Book (and later The Negro Travelers’ Green Book) Green intended to make a guide to direct visitors to black-friendly establishments in the City. The concept became popular and demand for a farther-reaching guide was immense.

Jim Crow Laws in the South made travel difficult, especially for northern blacks unused to navigating the tense racial waters of the area. Many blacks left families during the Great Migration and the climate of the South made them loathe to return for a visit. Green collected information on restaurants, hotels, gas stations, and other businesses where blacks would be served in relative safety. In many segregated towns, accommodations for blacks were scarce or non-existent. The Green Book helped build a network of “tourist homes” where locals with an extra bedroom opened their homes to travelers for a fee. The guide was especially helpful in avoiding “sundown towns,” places where blacks were explicitly unwelcome after dark and would be subject to arrest or even violence.

Eventually, Green diversified his business. In addition to printing 15,000 copies of The Green Book each year, Green started a Vacation Reservation Service to book reservations at black-owned businesses. By 1949, Green had amassed reviews from all parts of the country and even locales as far away as Bermuda, Canada, and Mexico. Initially, the book was free (save for 10 cents to cover the cost of shipping) but The Green Book was also offered at Esso gas stations, which was unique at the time for offering franchises to black owners.

The introduction to the book was written by Green and included the following statement:

“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 rights and privileges in the United States.”

The last issue was published in 1964 after the passage of The Civil Rights Act.