Opening the Road: Plan a Trip Using the Green Book

• It's February and Black History Month.  We welcome Keila V. Dawson, who has a brand-new book about a worthy topic. Let's hit the road.....

OPENING THE ROAD: VICTOR HUGO GREEN AND THE GREEN BOOK is the true story about the Green Book travel guides African Americans used during segregation and its creator, Victor Hugo Green.

By the 1930s, affordable cars and improved highways lured travelers to hit the open road. But those roads weren’t open to all. Black travelers had difficulty finding food, lodging, gas, and even restrooms to use.

 Green published his first guide in 1936, but it only covered Metropolitan New York. The demand for the guide grew, and two years later the Green Book became a national guide. It was updated annually, without the convenience of a computer, and when fewer than half of U.S. homes owned a telephone! With the help of his wife, Alma, a network of mail carriers, a sales staff, Black-owned businesses and Green Book travelers, the guide remained in print for almost thirty years.

 Plan a Trip Activity

 Planning a trip using the Green Book steered Black travelers to businesses that welcomed them, helped them avoid embarrassment and danger.

 Using the Green Book guides, take a trip back in time to explore different editions to learn if there were listings in your city and state.

Instructions:

1. Go to the New York Public Library DIGITAL COLLECTIONS of the Green Book and click on the guide cover for the 1938 edition, the first national edition.

·       Find the index.

·       Is your state in index? If so, go to the page number to find the cities listed.

·       Is your city listed?

·       If you found your city and state, what type of businesses did you find? How many?

·       What do you think the information you found or didn’t find means?

For example, if you searched for Houston, Texas in the 1938 Green Book, you’d find twenty-one states and the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.). But not the state of Texas.

2. Search the 1939 edition and so on.

·       If you found your city and state, what type of businesses did you find?  How many?

·      What do you think the information you found or didn’t find means?  The 1939 edition includes Texas on page 41.

 And the following listings in the 1939 edition in Houston include:

o   four hotels

o   one restaurant

o   one tavern

o   one automotive shop

o   one beauty parlor

o   one drug store

3. Keep going!

·       In every subsequent year, did you find more states listed? More cities? More listings in the same cities found in the previous edition?

·       Compare and contrast listings and editions 5 years or more years apart.

 Eight years later, in the 1947 Green Book, Texas is on page 75.

·       What do you think the information you found or didn’t find means?

 

 The 1947 edition lists the following businesses in Houston:

• o   four hotels (two new, two from 1939)
• o   one restaurant  (a different one from 1939)
• o   two beauty parlors (one new, one from 1939)
• o   one barber shop (new listing)
• o   one tavern (the same one listed in 1939)
• o   one liquor store (new listing)
• o   zero automotive shop (there was one listed in 1939)
• o   two drug stores (one new, one from 1939)

This activity should spark a discussion about how Black Americans planned road trips using the Green Book and traveled during segregation. And given communication was not readily available like today, why Victor Green urged, “Carry your Green Book with you, you many need it.”

Find more activities to use with OPENING THE ROAD: VICTOR HUGO GREEN AND THE GREEN BOOK in the educator’s guide written by the author.

Keila V. Dawson is co-editor of NO VOICE TOO SMALL: FOURTEEN YOUNG AMERICANS MAKING HISTORY, along with Lindsay H. Metcalf and Jeanette Bradley, illustrated by Bradley (Charlesbridge, September 2020) and the forthcoming NO WORLD TOO BIG:YOUNG PEOPLE FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE also with Lindsay H. Metcalf and Jeanette Bradley, illustrated by Bradley (Charlesbridge, spring 2023). She is the author of THE KING CAKE BABY, illustrated by Vernon Smith (Pelican Publishing 2015) and OPENING THE ROAD: VICTOR HUGO GREEN AND HIS GREEN BOOK, illustrated by Alleanna Harris (Beaming Books, January 26, 2021). Dawson was born and grew up in New Orleans, has lived and worked in the Philippines, Japan, and Egypt and lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. Find her on Twitter, Instagram,  Pinterest, or her website.