More Negro Motorist Green Books Available

From the Journal of Southern History's twitter feed @JourSouHist I see that the Schomberg Library in New York has put a bunch of editions of the Negro Motorist Green Book up on the net.  For more on these travel guides for African Americans in the waning days of Jim Crow, here's a discussion about them from the radio show Your Weekly Constitutional.  I've been looking through editions to see what places listed there still exist -- and through the magic of google maps street view I'm seeing that a lot are now gone.   This testifies to me how much urban renewal changed the face of African American communities -- and in some cases erased them.

The image is of the Southern Queen Hotel in the Shake Rag section of Bowling Green, Kentucky.  It was listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book.

Comments

[Jimbino]

There must exist a Negro Motorist Public Lands Book serving as a guide to Amerikan Blacks who want to camp, RV, hunt and fish-- I have deliberately counted the Black faces in the vaunted National Parks and National Forests of the US West.

From Yosemite to the Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde, they appear to be mere White Country Clubs--a holdover from Jim Crow, apparently. On my last trip of several months, I counted 4 Black faces among some 4000 visitors. The situation for Hispanics is similar, though the minority visitors to Yosemite were overwhelmingly East and South Asian.

Disneyland and Disney World do better, leading me to propose that we sell those vaunted public lands and return the lost patrimony to our Blacks and Hispanics, many of whom would like some help in putting food on the table and financing a college education for their kids instead of financing the national White Country Club network.

[Bill]

Jimbino, the national parks exist for several,purposes, the first of which is environmental, namely to preserve beautiful and unique features of our earth. Yes, people want to visit them. When we traveled and visited them, we too noticed a big white presence among the visitors, although I always had a Puerto Rican hanging around with her and my offspring. The big western road trip is like a lot of vacations, expensive. It is pretty much the same on trips abroad, although that has been changing recently. The blacks we encountered in Europe were often urban blacks, which is understandable as there is more money to be found among professionals in urban environments than there is among among rural populations. Urban people are more likely to want to travel abroad and to have the money to do so. As I was about to close, the idea struck me that your idea may be a wonderful argument for those conservative western types who want to sell off the federal lands. It gives an aura of concern for the poor to their land grabbing ways. By saying this I in no way wish to imply that your comment is a stalking horse for those interests.

[Jimbino]

Preservation of our patrimony and our environment, like education of our kids, is too important to entrust to gummint. Private landowners, like private schools, do a much better job.

Our gummint managed to kill off most all of the buffalo, for example, while Ted Turner and other private landowners are raising and protecting thousands. Poor people from all over the world visit Disney World.

It's a good thing that gummint doesn't own and manage our golf courses and sports venues like it does our national parks and forests.

It's time to abolish another gummint boondoggle.