Resources

Collected resources include links to additional Green Book projects, press coverage, historical newspapers, and bibliographic sources.

 

Additional Green Book projects:

New York Public Library's digital scans of the original Green Book issues

Susan Hellman's Virginia Green Book map

Green Book in Virginia

Overground Railroad

Mapping the Green Book

Montana in the Green Book

Oasis/Spaces, a Green Book Project: African American Travel in NC, 1933-1966

Jim Crow and the American Road Trip: Tennessee Green Book Sites, an Interactive Map

Alvin Hall, Driving the Green Book Podcast

Derek Adams, Sanctuary

Jonathan Calm, Green Book

 

Press:

Green Book Sites: Local History and Architecture, Professer Buzzkill History Podcast, March 5, 2024.

The Green Book Guided Black Travelers Safely through Segregated Minnesota, Too, Janet Moore, The Star Tribune, February 25, 2024

Green Book Law will Preserve Historical Sites, VPM/NPR, Richmond, VA, July 24, 2023

Charlottesville Historians Discuss local Green Books and Their Significance to Black Travelers, NBC29/WVIR, Charlottesville, February 28, 2023

Hundreds of places in Virginia were listed in the famed ‘Green Book.’ This project seeks to find them all, Virginian-Pilot, June 19, 2021

Preservation group aims to protect remaining sites of historic ‘Green Book’, Sun-Gazette, May 21, 2021

"Arthur Farrar of Charles County," Your Charles County, Charles County, MD, March 8, 2021

The Green Book Motorist and Tourist Guide in Charles County, Preservation Matters, Charles County, MD, March 2021

“You Will Find It Handy: Traveling Safely in the Old Dominion with The Green Book,” Office of Historic Alexandria, February 24, 2021

Local Green Book Motel was a Haven for Black Travelers During Jim Crow, Chesterfield Observer, October 14, 2020

The Green Book Then and Now, WMAR-TV Baltimore, August 6, 2020

"You Will Find It Handy,” Documenting Green Book’ Sites in Maryland, Baltimore Heritage July 17, 2020

Exploring Green Book Sites in Maryland, Preservation Maryland Baltimore, April 8, 2020

Numerous Sites in Rhode Island Appear in Historic Green Book, NBC 10, WJAR, February 21, 2019

The Green Book in Providence, ProvidenceDailyDose.com, January 13, 2019

Remembering the Book that Opened the Road for African-American Travelers, RI NPR, July 20, 2017

Safe Travels in the Segregation Era, WYPR-FM Baltimore, August 3, 2017

The segregation-era travel guide that saved black Americans from having to sleep in their cars, Vox, November 22, 2016

How Historic Preservation Can Drive Examination of Racial Inequality, Next City, July 21, 2016

The Green Book Gets Some Press Traction, Mapping the Green Book: A Production Blog About Making History, April 10, 2016

 

Newspapers:

The Afro-American Newspaper, Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC,1895-1970, available through Proquest Historical Newspapers

The Norfolk Journal and Guide, Norfolk, VA, 1922-1931 and 1932-1973, Library of Congress Chronicling America

The Richmond Planet, Richmond, VA, 1883-1938, Library of Congress Chronicling America

 

Bibliography:

Armstead, Myra. B. Y. “Revisiting Hotels and Other Lodgings: American Tourist Spaces Through the Lens of Black Pleasure-travelers, 1880-1950.” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, 25 (2015): 136-159.

Bay, Mia. “Traveling Black/Buying Black: Retail and Roadside Accommodation during the Segregation Era.” In Race and Retail: Consumption Across the Color Line, edited by Mia Bay and Ann Fabian, 15-33. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015.

Belasco, Warren James. 1997. Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Berish, Andrew S. Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ‘40s. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Burrows, John H. The Necessity of Myth: A History of the National Negro Business League, 1900-1945. Auburn, AL: Hickory Hill Press, 1988.

Devlin, Erin Krutko. Segregation in Virginia's National Parks, 1916-1965, National Park Service, 2022 (Accessible HERE).

Driskell, Jay. “An Atlas of Self-Reliance: The Negro Motorist’s Green Book (1937-1964),” Smithsonian, July 30, 2015 (Accessible HERE).

Fletcher, Patsy Mose. Historically African American Leisure Destinations Around Washington, D.C. Charleston: History Press, 2015.

Foote, Kenneth E. “Editing Memory and Automobility & Race: Two Learning Activities on Contested Heritage and Place.” Southeastern Geographer 52, no. 4 (2012): 384-397.

Foster, Mark S. “In the Face of ‘Jim Crow’: Prosperous Blacks and Vacations, Travel, and Outdoor Leisure, 1890–1945”. Journal of Negro History 84, no. 2 (1999): 130–49.

Franz, Kathleen. “‘The Open Road’: Automobility and Racial Uplift in the Interwar Years.” In Technology and the African-American experience, edited by D. Miller, 131-54. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.

Franz, Kathleen. “African-Americans Take to the Open Road.” In Major Problems in American Popular Culture, edited by Kathleen Franz and Susan Smulyan. New York: Centgage Publishing, 2011.

Gilroy, Paul. “Driving While Black.” In Car Cultures, edited by D. Miller, 81-104. New York: Berg Press, 2001.

Hall, Alvin. Driving the Green Book. New York: HarperOne, 2023. See his Driving the Green Book podcast at drivingthegreenbook.com.

Hall, Michael R. “The Negro Traveller’s Guide to a Jim Crow South: Negotiating Racialized Landscapes During a Dark Period in United States Cultural History, 1936-1967.” Postcolonial Studies 17, no. 3 (2014): 307-319.

Holder, Calvin B. “Racism Toward Black African Diplomats During the Kennedy Administration.” Journal of Black Studies 14, no. 1 (September 1983): 31-48.

Holland, Jearold Winston. Black Recreation: A Historical Perspective. Chicago: Burnham/Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.

Kahrl, Andrew W. The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Kahrl, Andrew W., Malcolm Cammeron, and Brian Katen. African American Outdoor Recreation: A National Historic Landmarks Theme Study. National Park Service, 2022 (accessible HERE).

Kennedy, Richard A. Automobility, Hospitality, African American Tourism, and Mapping Victor H. Green’s Negro Motorist Green Book. A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Geography Department, East Carolina University, 2013.

Lupkin, Paula Rachel. Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Making of Modern Urban Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Luxenberg, Steve. Separate: The Story of ‘Plessy v. Ferguson’ and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2019.

Miles, Jan. The Post-Racial Negro Green Book. Brown Bird Books, 2017.

Reut, Jennifer. “Black Travelers On and Off the Road.” Society of Architectural Historians Archipedia. https://sah-archipedia.org/essays/TH-01-ART-006.

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: Liveright Publishing, 2017.

Rugh, Susan Sessions. Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2008.

Sandoval-Strausz, Andrew K. Hotel, an American History New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Seiler, Cotten. “‘So That We as a Race Might Have Something Authentic to Travel By’: African American Automobility and Cold-War Liberalism.” American Quarterly 58, no. 4 (2006): 1091-1117.

Sorin, Gretchen. Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights. New York: Liveright Publishing, 2020.

Sorin, Gretchen Sullivan. Keep Going:” African Americans on the Road in the era of Jim Crow. A dissertation presented to the faculty of the State University of New York at Albany, 2009.

Sorin, Gretchen Sullivan. “The Negro Motorist Green-Book”. The Ephemera Journal 13 (2010): 16-27.

Sugrue, Thomas J. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House, 2008.

Taylor, Candacy. Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America. New York: Abrams Press, 2020.

Townsend, Jacinda. Driving While Black: African-Americans Used a Crowd-Sourced Guide to Navigate Segregation. Smithsonian, April, 2016 (Accessible HERE). 

Trembanis, Sarah L. The Set-Up Men: Race, Culture and Resistance in Black Baseball New York: McFarland and Company, 2014.

Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002.

Vachon, Nicholas Murray. “The Junction: The Cold War, Civil Rights, and the African Diplomats of Maryland’s Route 40,” The Primary Source II, issue II, 2012-Spring-8 (Accessible HERE)

Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns New York: Random House, 2010.

Williams, Clay. “The Guide for Colored Travelers: A Reflection of the Urban League.” Journal of American and Comparative Cultures 24, no. 3-4 (2001): 71–79.

Wolcott, Victoria W. Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle Over Segregated Recreation in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.