“Driving the Green Book” by Alvin Hall

The Negro Motorist Green Book was a guide book for African Americans published between 1936 and 1967. The publication served as a guide to finding businesses that were welcoming to black Americans, including hotels and restaurants, during an era when open and often legally prescribed discrimination against nonwhites was widespread. That description comes from New York’s Museum of Arts & Design in its presentation of Sanctuary, an exhibit based on the Green Book the museum featured in 2018 by artist Derrick Adams. Adams was the first person to be interviewed by Alvin Hall on the road trip that served as the basis for his book, Driving the Green Book.Victor Hugo Green, a Harlem postal worker, conceived the guide to avoid what he called “aggravations” for black Americans who traveled, noted Hall. Along with Janee Woods Weber, Hall visited 12 U.S. cities from Detroit to New Orleans in a whirlwind 12-day tour, interviewing individuals with stories to tell about travels made with family and friends who traveled when the Green Book provided vital information. The podcasts from that trip help underscore the guide's importance  and the dangers faced en route.   https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/driving-the-green-book/id1519839250 Hall, who produced a documentary on the Green Book for BBC in 2016, said the initial reaction for many when first hearing about the guide is surprise. “Many people have expressed the fact that they just didn’t know about it,” said Hall, who told Steve Tarter that he found it interesting that the BBC program that played to a global audience—all over the world--except in the United States.More became aware of the guide after a film called The Green Book made the rounds in 2018, but that movie, highlighting the 1962 tour of African American pianist Don Shirley, “had virtually nothing to do with the actual Green Book,” said Hall.Among those interviewed by Hall was Noelle Trent, now the CEO and president of the Museum of African American History in Boston, who recounted that even recent family trips started at 5 a.m. in the morning, a holdover from the past.Five in the morning was that magical hour for many black families when they set out to travel, said Hall, noting that food for the trip was often laid out the night before. Along with facing the problem of obtaining food and services on the trip, “You wanted to get on the road early to reach your destination before dark. The last thing you wanted was to land in a sundown town late at night,” he said.Sundown towns—communities that prohibited African Americans after the sun went down, Hall explained, were actually more common in the northern United States than in the South.The Green Book stands as an example of black ingenuity, he said. Finding ways to seek safe harbor in a country where doors were often closed with real danger present was an act of resistance but it was also an act of resilience, said Hall. “It's a story of people who did not become embittered or seek vengeance. We knew we had to make a way through this.”