History of the Green Book
The Negro Motorist Green Books were a series of travel guides published by Victor Hugo Green during America’s Jim Crow era to ensure the safety of African American travelers. Green was an African American mailman who hailed from Harlem, New York. After encountering discrimination on a road trip with his wife, Alma, Green published the first of twenty-three Green Books in 1936.
The Green Books offered relative safety and freedom that was important for many Black travelers, many of whom drove in order to avoid the humiliation and harassment of public transport. Black Americans faced discrimination across the entirety of the United States. Jim Crow laws were extremely prominent in the South, where African Americans were treated as second-class citizens in educational facilities, hospitals, prisons, pool halls, and restaurants. In the North and Midwest, Black Americans were threatened by “sundown towns,” places where non-white visitors were entirely prohibited after sundown. Given the many hostile environments, access to safe and dignifying establishments was important for Black travelers.
Over the course of three decades, Victor Green’s directory of Black-friendly establishments would become an impressive repertoire of businesses across all fifty states, the Caribbean, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, Europe, and Africa. Up until the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964 when publication ceased, the Green Books sold about 15,000 copies each year, highlighting their popularity and necessity during the Jim Crow era of the United States.
