Driving The Green Book

Adult nonfiction 

"That Black people have had to create mechanisms for survival is an indictment of America.  But it is also a testament to people of color that we have found ways to cope and survive and navigate this incredibly unfair and complex world.  The Green Book and a lot of other things like it were the tools that people used to navigate.

--Bryan Stevenson, lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative"

     Alvin Hall's Driving The Green Book is a logical reading follow up to A Fever In The Heartland.  Victor Green started his travel guidebook just a few years after the time period of the former book.  In those few years not much had changed in white attitudes and behaviors.

     Before you read the rest of the review, especially if you're white like me, I want you to think back on a trip you personally took by car.  What were your fears?  What precautions did you or your parents take?  Did you have to instruct your children or have your parents instruct you in survival behaviors?  How did the journey feel at a gut level?

     When I was a child in the 50s Dad used to take Harriet and me on long drives to amusement parks.  Although I didn't know it at the time, we were incredibly privileged.  We could stop at any gas station, restaurant, or other establishment and get prompt, courteous service.  Clean restrooms were always available.  If there had been a car breakdown my very unmechanical father would have had no trouble getting help.  There weren't places we had to avoid after darkness fell or at all.  

     Access to motor vehicles was a mixed blessing for Blacks in America.  On one hand it provided a way for them to avoid the degradation, humiliations, and outright perils of traveling by train or bus.  On the other hand it came with its own dangers.  In many places police and even non law enforcement whites could stop and harass or worse any Black for any reason including possession of a car.

     Victor Green decided to make traveling while Black a little less perilous.  His guidebooks, published yearly between 1936 and 1967 provided listings of safe motels, rooming houses, restaurants, gas stations, and other establishments.  For many Blacks, especially those traveling South they became survival guides.

     Hall utilized an unusual method of gathering materials for his book.  In addition to library research he took two extensive road trips, visiting places listed in the guidebooks and interviewing Blacks who had traveled during different eras.  Thanks to his living primary sources he is able to provide a rich narrative of the times in which Green created his publication and the need for it.

     While The Green Book was created as an affirmation of optimism with its editor envisioning a future of respect for all humanity in which it would no longer be needed, Hall and some of his interview subjects are a lot more guarded.  

     Jan Miles, author of The Post-Racial Negro Green Book, a collection of 21st century incidents grouped under categories such as police brutality, racial profiling, and white privilege, when asked if she could see a time when such documentation wouldn't be needed replied: "I don't see it.  I don't foresee an end to it now.  Maybe in someone else's lifetime.  If I had a child, probably not in that person's lifetime either."

     And Hall ends his book with this sobering prediction:  "If history is any judge, I doubt the current resurrection of information about the travel guide will result in its being included in textbooks approved by largely conservative white state and local education committees in the US.  Therefore, The Green Book's contribution to the lives of African Americans and the history of the United States will fade again, until a horrifying national racial event needs to be understood, needs context.  Then a new generation of Black, Brown, Asian, and white people will discover, for the first time again, along with incidents like the Red Summer of 1919 and the fate of Negro Wall Street in Tulsa in 1921, The Negro Motorist Green Book."

     So the two books I chose for my anniversary weekend reading have more in common than being rich and thought provoking portrayals of times in the recent past.  Both must serve as cautionary tales with huge implications for the present and future.

Jules Hathaway 

     

  

     

     

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