The maker of a 2019 documentary film about the book offered this summary: 'Everyone I was interviewing talked about the community that the Green Book created: a kind of parallel universe that was created by the book and this kind of secret road map that the Green Book outlined'.

Green founded and published the Green Book to avoid such problems, compiling resources 'to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trip more enjoyable'. Black Americans employed as athletes, entertainers, and salesmen also traveled frequently for work purposes using automobiles that they owned personally.Īfrican American travelers faced hardships such as white-owned businesses refusing to serve them or repair their vehicles, being refused accommodation or food by white-owned hotels, and threats of physical violence and forcible expulsion from whites-only ' sundown towns'. As the writer George Schuyler put it in 1930, 'all Negroes who can do so purchase an automobile as soon as possible in order to be free of discomfort, discrimination, segregation and insult'. Many black Americans took to driving, in part to avoid segregation on public transportation.

In response, Green wrote his guide to services and places relatively friendly to African Americans, eventually expanding its coverage from the New York area to much of North America, as well as founding a travel agency. Although pervasive racial discrimination and poverty limited black car ownership, the emerging African American middle class bought automobiles as soon as they could, but faced a variety of dangers and inconveniences along the road, from refusal of food and lodging to arbitrary arrest. It was originated and published by African American New York City postal worker Victor Hugo Green from 1936 to 1966, during the era of Jim Crow laws, when open and often legally prescribed discrimination against African Americans especially and other non-whites was widespread. The Negro Motorist Green Book (also The Negro Motorist Green-Book, The Negro Travelers' Green Book, or simply the Green Book) was an annual guidebook for African American roadtrippers.

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