1/14/2023 0 Comments Office depot greenbooks![]() The building standing at 2 Water Street is old enough to have housed the Depot Hotel in the late ’50s, but is now occupied by a laundromat and apartments. So I began by driving 10 minutes from my house to 2 Water Street in Ossining, the site of the Depot Square Hotel, which was located a block or so from the railroad station. But then I saw that there were even a lot of listings, even in late editions, in Westchester County, where I live. The listings for all those places were plentiful. The list of establishments grew a little each year, and there were roughly as many establishments in the North as in the South, which tells you that traveling while Black was difficult no matter which point of the compass you picked.įor my trip, I first thought I might drive to New Jersey or Pennsylvania or, closer to home, Connecticut. The first couple of editions simply sold ad space for merchants in the New York area, but by 1938, Green was publishing an extensive state-by-state directory of tourist-trade merchants willing to cater to Black travelers. There is also a documentary film in the works, by director Becky Wible Searles and author Calvin Alexander Ramsey, who has also written a play and a children’s book, Ruth and the Green Book about the guide. And now the New York Public Library, as part of its new online Public Domain Collections project has posted 22 editions of the Green Book, from 1937 to 1964. ![]() Today actual copies of Green Books are rare enough to be collectible, but the University of South Carolina has posted the 1956 edition online for several years. ![]() He also published a vacation guide, a railroad edition, an airline edition, and ultimately an international edition. Green’s earliest editions identified only places east of the Mississippi where African Americans would find the welcome mat out, but over the years he expanded his directory to include the whole country. Or, as some editions put it on the covers: “For vacation without aggravation.” Or, more pointedly: “Carry it with you… you may need it.” The title page promised “Assured Protection for the Negro Traveler,” while text inside assured readers that using a Green Book would allow them to travel “without embarrassment.” The Green Book listed hotels, motels, restaurants, barbershops and beauty parlors, tailors, road houses, guest houses, trailer parks, service stations, theaters, dance halls, garages, and taverns where African American travelers could be sure they would not be turned away because of their skin color. ![]() Patterning his guide on similar publications for Jews, Green published new editions annually until his death in 1960, and his wife continued the business until 1966. Green published his first Negro Motorist Green Book (the name was later changed to The Negro Travelers’ Green Book). It all began in 1936, when a Harlem postal worker named Victor H. ![]()
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