A few years back my co-author Alberto Lopez sent me a link to the Negro Motorist Green Book, a travel guide for African Americans during the era of Jim Crow. It was published to let African Americans know where they might stay and eat on road trips. This was necessary, of course, because a lot of establishments provided no accommodations to African Americans. The Green Book divided accommodations into hotels and motor homes. When I was back in Tuscaloosa back in April I stopped by the one remaining motor home in the city that was listed in the 1949 Green Book. I wanted to take a picture of it to illustrate the piece of Jim Crow that invovled limited accommodations. The house is actually quite nice.
I'm going to be talking a little bit more about this as I finish off my brief essay on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a tipping point in property rights.
Update as of April 30, 2015: I looked into this a little more and I now see that the rooming house was operated by Mrs. Barnes -- who I think was the wife of Benjamin H. Barnes, who was a Tuscaloosa educator. The YMCA on 18th Street is also named after him. This is further evidence of how racial uplift, education, and entrepreneurship frequently went together.
This is one all too painful aspect of segregation that almost all white folks nowadays have no conscious awareness or memory of, so it's much befitting of far greater attention than it's yet received!
Posted by: Dave Garrow | June 28, 2014 at 05:23 PM