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HOW MANY BLACK LIVES DID THE GREEN BOOK SAVE
Celebrating the Green Book During Juneteenth
I remember my grandparents having a Green Book
This past Saturday during a Juneteenth celebration I participated in a vignette on using the small pamphlet named the Negro Motorist Green Book or Negro Travelers Green Book. I was selected by the writer to be the main character in this skit; a Black traveler in 1936.
My character utilized his Green Book to find hotels, restaurants, drugstores, nightclubs, liquor stores, gas stations, and other safe places while traveling across the segregated Jim Crow Southern States.
In 1936 Black people feared traveling because many Southern towns banned Black people from their towns at dusk. These towns were known as Sun Down Towns, meaning that a Black person should not be seen after dusk in those towns. The possibility of being jailed, beaten, or lynched was real in these types of towns.
Victor H. Green, a Black postman in Harlem, New York, created, wrote, and published this travel guide for Blacks. He used his last name, Green to name the book. The Green Book reached 2 million people by 1962 before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
