the racist American southern and eastern states created a need for a travelers guide to avoid the racist assholes, so Victor Green made a travelers guide so blacks could avoid racist places and find the hotels, gas stations, and restaurants that were hospitable

Black travelers in the USA have often faced hardships from racist assholes, such as businesses refusing to serve them or repair their vehicles, being refused accommodation or food by white-owned hotels, and threats of physical violence and forcible expulsion from whites-only "sundown towns".

In 1936, Victor Hugo Green, a New York City mailman and World War I veteran, originated and published the first annual volume of The Negro Motorist Green Book, later renamed The Negro Travelers' Green Book, an annual guidebook for black travelers to avoid open and often legal discrimination, compiling resources "to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trip more enjoyable."

(Read digital copies from the New York Library https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-green-book#/?tab=about or PDF http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Race/R_Casestudy/87_135_1736_GreenBk.pdf )

Although pervasive racial discrimination and poverty limited black car ownership, the emerging black middle class bought automobiles as soon as they could, to avoid segregation on public transportation but faced a variety of dangers and inconveniences along the road, from refusal of food and lodging to arbitrary arrest.

In response, Green wrote his guide to services and places relatively friendly to blacks, eventually expanding its coverage from the New York area to much of North America, as well as founding a travel agency.'

The custom Google Map below compiles placemarks for over 1500 listings from the Spring 1956 Green Book.

Green offered a reward of one dollar for each accepted recommendation, which he increased to five dollars by 1941. He also obtained information from colleagues in the US Postal Service, who would "ask around on their routes" to find suitable public accommodations. The Postal Service was (and is) one of the largest employers of blacks, and its employees were ideally situated to inform Green of which places were safe and hospitable to black travelers.

The 1949 edition included a quote from Mark Twain: "Travel is fatal to prejudice", inverting Twain's original meaning.

Many black Americans took to driving, in part to avoid segregation on public transportation. As the writer George Schuyler put it in 1930, "all Negroes who can do so purchase an automobile as soon as possible in order to be free of discomfort, discrimination, segregation and insult." Black Americans employed as athletes, entertainers, and salesmen also traveled frequently for work purposes.

Repeated and sometimes violent incidents of discrimination directed against diplomats from countries in Africa, particularly on U.S. Route 40 between New York and Washington, D.C., led to the administration of President John F. Kennedy setting up a Special Protocol Service Section within the State Department to assist black diplomats traveling and living within the United States.

The Green Book attracted sponsorship from a number of businesses, including black newspapers in Ohio and Kentucky. Standard Oil (later Esso) was also a sponsor, owing to the efforts of James "Billboard" Jackson, a pioneering black Esso sales representative. Esso's "race group", part of its marketing division, promoted the Green Book as enabling Esso's black customers to "go further with less anxiety". By contrast, Shell gas stations were known to refuse black customers.

While the Green Book was intended to make life easier for those living in racist areas, its publisher looked forward to a time when such guidebooks would no longer be necessary. As Green wrote, "there will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go as we please, and without embarrassment."



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/history-green-book-african-american-travelers-180958506/
http://mappingthegreenbook.tumblr.com/

Thanks Gary!