Route 66’s legacy of racial segregation | Travel | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2015/feb/27/green-book-south-west-usa-route-66-civil-rights
Being black and travelling away from home during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the US was potentially life-threatening. It involved a lot of planning, faith and a reliable travel guide called the The Negro Motorist Green Book. Victor H Green, a black postal worker from Harlem, New York, published this annual roadside companion from 1936-1964 and it was distributed by Esso gas stations. Green said he wanted to “give the Negro traveller information that will keep him from running into difficulties and embarrassments”. This book did more than that: it provided life-saving information, which earned it the unofficial title of the Bible of Black Travel.
The book listed restaurants, hotels, barbershops, beauty parlours, bars, and service stations that were willing to serve black people. These properties were not only powerful symbols of refuge, they were places that provided comfort and shelter in an unsafe world at a shameful time in US history.