An Underground Zagat
23/8/10 08:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madrobinsI had never heard of The Negro Motorist's Green Book before this morning. Reading about it I had one of those "of course" moments, and a big wallop of sorrow and rage that such a book was ever necessary in this country, and a chunk of admiration for Victor Green's way of dealing with the problem of Traveling While Negro in Jim Crow America.
Essentially, the book was a guide for African American travelers, giving them information on lodging, restaurants, even gas stations where they could reliably be served, as well as information on "sunset towns"--the places where by law African Americans were not allowed to remain after dark. It was a guidebook to avoiding humiliation and approaching something like the privilege of freedom to travel that white folk took for granted.
It's easy for me, comfortably white and middle class and of an age where things were beginning to change when I was first aware of segregation and prejudice (and hell, I was growing up in Greenwich Village, where, theoretically at least, everyone was against prejudice and was therefore to be considered virtuous), to look on a work like The Green Book with historical interest. But really, what I admire is the creativity of people responding to what amounted to a blanket "No" by saying, "Well, Actually, Yes. Go to Niagara Falls for your honeymoon. Travel to that convention in Chicago. It can be done, let's show you how."
Essentially, the book was a guide for African American travelers, giving them information on lodging, restaurants, even gas stations where they could reliably be served, as well as information on "sunset towns"--the places where by law African Americans were not allowed to remain after dark. It was a guidebook to avoiding humiliation and approaching something like the privilege of freedom to travel that white folk took for granted.
It's easy for me, comfortably white and middle class and of an age where things were beginning to change when I was first aware of segregation and prejudice (and hell, I was growing up in Greenwich Village, where, theoretically at least, everyone was against prejudice and was therefore to be considered virtuous), to look on a work like The Green Book with historical interest. But really, what I admire is the creativity of people responding to what amounted to a blanket "No" by saying, "Well, Actually, Yes. Go to Niagara Falls for your honeymoon. Travel to that convention in Chicago. It can be done, let's show you how."