"We cater to white trade only"; this was the frequent attitude of American hotels and restaurants during the Jim Crow era. Mark S. Foster quotes a Black motorist in the early 1940s about an early afternoon, emotional, psychological "small cloud" that, in the late afternoon, "casts a shadow of apprehension on our hearts and sours us a little. 'Where', it asks us, 'will you stay tonight?'" Is there room at the Inn for us Blacks?
Enter The Green Book. Conceived in 1932 and published for the first time in 1936, The Green Book included up-to-date information about and directories of hotels, gas stations, camps, produce stands, rest areas, road houses, and cafes that would serve African-Americans, just as The Jewish Travel Guide had done for Jewish travelers a couple of decades prior. Hackley and Harrison's Hotel and Apartment Guide for Colored Travelers was published in 1930 and covered rates for board, room, garage and accommodations for 300 American and Canadian cities.
Esso (later, ExxonMobil) sponsored issues of The Green Book because of an employee, "Billboard" Jackson, who saw to it that Esso’s black-focused marketing division promoted it so that its Black customers could "go further with less anxiety." Shell gas stations were known historically to refuse them. The Green Book was for blacks what the A.A.A. Guide was for whites. Published first in New York, The Green Book was from 1937 distributed nationally until and during World War Two but then resumed publication in 1946. The Green Book covered only the New York City area in the First Edition but then came to include all 50 states, parts of Canada, Mexico and then Bermuda. Coverage was best for the Eastern and Southern United States but worst for the Great Plains and Western states such as Montana and North Dakota. Distribution was aided by the franchising of Esso gas-stations to African-Americans. Eventually, The Green Book sold around 15,000 copies per year. The 1937 edition clocked in at 16 pages and cost a quarter. The price quintupled by 1957 and made Mr. Green so successful as to enable him to retire from the post office and hire a small publishing staff and office in West Harlem. The content ballooned to more than 80 pages by 1949. Its changing names and fortunes after Green's death in 1960 signaled movements in race relations. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 obviated the need to adjust to racial segregation in public facilities. Some thought The Green Book would worsen the problem by steering black travelers to segregated businesses instead of toward desegregation. Black establishments adjacent to highways lost out to integrated mega-chains along the interstate.
The final edition was published in 1966-1967. Six bills enacted in Florida recently were seen to so pose threats to people of color and to LGBTQ2+ citizens that travel advisories were announced. Reach me at svafinebooks@gmail.com or at http://www.svafinebooks.com.
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