Today, “Route 66 Backroads” author Jim Hinckley sent me a link to a 1949 edition of the Negro Motorist Green Book.
The guidebook says it provides a “list of hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, beauty shops, barber shops and various other services can most certainly help solve your travel problems. It was the idea of Victor H. Green, the publisher, in introducing the Green Book, to save the travelers of his race as many difficulties and embarrassments as possible.”
“Difficulties” was a euphemism for “beatings or worse.” In certain parts of the country, if a white person were offended, black motorists sometimes were in danger for their lives. Although the number of lynchings started to decline markedly in the mid-1920s, there were still three confirmed such killings even in 1949.
A copy of the Green Book can be seen here (warning: huge Acrobat file). Looking at the towns on the Route 66 corridor, it’s disquieting to see that black motorists often had to go long stretches between “tourist homes” to stay the night. In Illinois, for instance, there is nothing between Chicago and Springfield, and nothing between Springfield and East St. Louis. That’s a long haul on two-lane roads.
It was the same in other states: nothing between St. Louis clear to Lebanon in Missouri. In Oklahoma, if you needed a restaurant or room outside of Tulsa or Oklahoma City, you were out of luck. In New Mexico, there was nothing between Tucumcari and Albuquerque. And in Arizona, there was zilch for blacks along the Mother Road.
And James Loewen’s 2005 book, “Sundown Towns,” revealed there was a wide swath of small towns in Illinois and the Missouri Ozarks in which blacks were not welcome after sundown, up until the 1970s.
Now, 60 years after the Green Book’s publication, the United States has just inaugurated a black man as president. Route 66ers often deride “progress” because it often takes away the historic businesses we love. But this is the kind of progress we can support.
Amen, brother!
To older people, progress made in this country must be more profound than it is to my generation born a few years after the “I Have a Dream” speech. We have never seen White Only or Colored Only signs at motels, cafes or bus staions from the days of institutionalized racism. We’ve seen them in books and museums where they belong.
Today, areas were people can be attacked because of their race are still around, although it is reported differently depending on the race of the attackers and victims. Attacks on black motorist by hateful whites makes national news and could spark civil unrest. Attacks on white motorist by blacks or other minorities is just called street crime. Lynchings still happen, they’re just not called lynchings. It is somewhat ironic that on many historical routes and highways around the conutry, there are sections of roads through parts of cities where the criminal attackers may be descendents (sic) of people who were horribly discriminated against years ago.
Hopefully, the events of today will bring and end to the double standard and everyone will be accoutable for their actions. No more fear, no more distrust, no more blame, no more debt owed, and no more guilt for things done in past by those born well after the days of MLK. Its a new day …..
Great site Keep it up!
Jeff, nearly all attacks on white motorists by blacks nowadays occur where race isn’t a factor. The thugs are looking for an easy mark for easy money, no matter the skin color. Race is beside the point.
But in parts of the Deep South a generation or so ago, it was different. Just a young black man whistling at a white woman (see Emmitt Till) would get you killed.
Those are completely different motivations here. One is indiscriminate greed; the other is racial hatred. Neither is good. But to equate the two is simply inaccurate.
Having lived in two cities in the Deep South and still living in one of them now, and having been the victim of a racially motivated attack, my experiences may different then yours. I can sort of under stand how black travelers may have felt being physically abused. I can under stand the humiliation of having police down play the attack as radom violence rather than a hate crime. Blurry vision in one eye will be a reminder for me for the rest of my life. This has happened not just me, but to an untold amount of people.
This conversation is going further than it should since this is a Route 66 site, and I won’t comment on this anymore. But to be free thinkers, we need to question conventional wisdom and pop logic, which is that whites are the perpetators of hate and are intolerant and other races are only victims. We are all human beings and are capable of the same goodness and attrocities. The opposite of conventional wisdo, and pop logic happens every day, we just don’t hear about. I pray it never happens to you. Questioning what we are told is part of being and independant, open minded person. This gives us the only kind of diversity that matters – diversity of thought and opinion.
Again,
You have a great site here !!!
God Bless
I don’t mind this extended discussion on race.
I think my whole point is that crime is a complicated problem, with myriad causes and motivations. At the same time, our country has definitely changed for the better in the past century. No longer are black people being tortured and slain by mobs of people without due process of law, like they were by the thousands a couple of generations ago. No longer is local law enforcement turning a blind eye from such atrocities.