"Your Weekly Constitutional" Discussion of Negro Motorist Green Book

Professor Stewart Harris of Appalachian School of Law hosts a weekly public radio discussion of law and often history, known as "Your Weekly Constitutional."  This week his discussion is about the Negro Motorist Green Book and I had the pleasure of speaking with him about it -- and really about Jim Crow segregation more generally.  This week's discussion is available here.  The full catalog of podcasts of past discussions are here.

Comments

[Kim Krawiec]

This is great, Al, and you undersell yourself, as always. I am listening right now (rather than doing my own work), and this is a wonderful exploration, not only of the Green Book, but of the civil rights era, the depiction of history in popular culture, and more. Anyone interested in the history of segregation should definitely listen.

[anon]

IN the Introduction to the Green Book, the authors note:

"The Jewish press has long published information about places that are restricted ..."

It is so ironic then that the Green Book bears such prominent adverts from "Ford" and indeed, the copy linked bears the Ford name all over it. This irony isn't lost on those who know, but unfortunately, few probably do.

Let's also try to occasionally remember that other groups have fared badly in the world of the right and proper right here in America. Al, perhaps you have written on this topic. This too is part of the "history of segregation."

If so, I would very much like to read your take on the historic and continuing discrimination, prejudice and hostility toward other groups in America, and your views about how those groups have coped.

Of course, slavery was a uniquely horrible institution. But, so was the mass extermination of millions, and the sentiments shared by so many right here in America about this and other issues affecting other groups are not insignificant.

[Al Brophy]

Thanks for the kind words, Kim. Stewart Harris is a great interviewer and he really helped structure the discussion to bring out the story.

Anon, I agree that it's very important to look at the complete picture of American history -- and I wish I knew more about areas beyond African American legal history. There's a lot of terrific work being done -- and that's been done over the past several decades -- on racial discrimination in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries against religious and racial minorities. And of course in contemporary civil rights law, too. Regarding Henry Ford, Victoria Woeste's Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech (2012) comes to mind as an important recent book. Also, Ralph Clifford wrote about discrimination against Jews in the twentieth century (as part of research he did regarding the Green Book recently) here: http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2014/11/the-long-search.html

[anon]

Al

Thanks for the references.