Traveling While Black in the Jim Crow Era
One man and his travel guide provided safety and community during a fraught time — meet the woman keeping his legacy alive.
By Candacy Taylor and Ashlea Halpern
FOR MOST AMERICANS, Route 66 represents freedom: wide-open highway, hair blowing in the wind, kitschy roadside attractions. But there is another side to the Mother Road — one that writer and photographer Candacy Taylor has spent years unearthing.
Back in the Jim Crow era, black Americans driving through the US relied on a travel guide called The Negro Travelers’ Green Book to tell them where they could and couldn’t stop — for gas, a meal, a motel room. The book was produced by Victor H. Green, a black postal worker from Harlem, New York, and published between 1936 and 1967. Without this so-called Bible of Black Travel, a black motorist might unwittingly pull into a cafeteria or filling station where the reception would be hostile. Or worse, he might look for lodging in a “sundown town,” where blacks were forbidden after dark.
The book was unfortunately largely forgotten by many until Taylor happened upon a rare copy while researching a Route 66 Moon travel guidebook. She teamed up with the National Park Service’s Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program to photograph Green Book listings along the road and has since received multiple grants to research and map an estimated 10,000 sites across the country. Fewer than one-third are still standing, and fewer than 5 percent are operational. The project will eventually include a book, a traveling exhibition, and a mobile app.
While documenting these properties is important from a historical standpoint, Taylor is driven by a bigger mission — to foster dialogue about institutional racism as it exists today. In August, the NAACP issued its first ever statewide travel advisory, in Missouri. “Sometimes people say to me, ‘Thank God, we don’t need Green Books anymore’ or ‘Thank God, that’s over,’ but it’s not over,” says Taylor. “With the awakening of a Trump presidency, people are like, ‘Where did all these white supremacists come from? Where did this alt-right whatever come from?’ It’s like, they’ve been there. They’ve been making policies.”
Here, Taylor walks us through some of the Green Book sites, many on Route 66, that are still standing and what the future has in store for each.
The Dunbar Hotel, Los Angeles
“The Dunbar was the first hotel in America built expressly for black people. It was originally called Hotel Somerville because a dentist, Dr. John Alexander Somerville, was sick of being shut out of places because he was black, and he opened the hotel in 1928 in the middle of South Central. It drew the crème de la crème of black intelligentsia and became a hot spot for Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Sarah Vaughan, who’d play at nearby clubs. Today the property is protected under the National Register of Historic Places; it’s home to low-income senior housing. South Central is not the Bloods-and-Crips war zone people think it is. There are trees, it’s quiet, there are kids out playing. It has community.”
Clifton’s Cafeteria, Los Angeles
“Clifton’s is legendary — and bizarre. Clifford Clinton, a white man, opened the first one in downtown L.A. at the terminus of Route 66, and it was interracial from the start. Clinton grew up the son of missionaries and believed nobody should go hungry in a country with so much wealth, so even if you couldn’t pay, he still fed you. He gave away a lot of five-cent meals during the Depression. If you were poor, you probably had bigger issues to worry about than whether a black person was eating at the table next to yours. Today’s building, near the original, was closed for several years and eventually underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation. A fake redwood tree rises through its center. Thankfully, it still has that old flavor.”
De Anza Motor Lodge, Albuquerque, NM
“This was a huge motel complex with eight buildings owned by C.G. Wallace, who traded in Zuni Indian goods and decided to integrate the space. It offered a true multicultural experience — Spanish, Native American, black, white. On that part of the drive, there were more than 100 motels serving Route 66 customers, but only 6 percent would serve blacks. By the time you had driven through Texas and made it to Albuquerque, you were exhausted! The De Anza’s existence was important. It’s going to be destroyed and turned into an extended-stay hotel. There’s an old Zuni Pueblo mural inside, as well as historic signage, which I hope will be salvaged.”
Threatt Filling Station, Luther, OK
“Edmond was a sundown town next door to Luther. I actually found an old postcard from Royce Cafe in Edmond that literally says, ‘A Good Place to Live, 6,000 Live Citizens, No Negroes.’ They’re really clear: We’re not having it. Although Luther is a town you can drive through in two minutes, gas stations and garages were really important. So was having somebody who could fix your car if it broke down in the middle of nowhere. It’s rare to find garages and gas stations from that era that are still standing, and Threatt is on the National Register, so at least we know that it’s protected.”
Graham’s Rib Station, Springfield, MO
“During World War II, there was a military base about an hour from Graham’s, and this is where the black soldiers would go. It was owned by a black couple but was integrated from the start; they had really good ribs, and white people wanted the food. A lot of bands would play at a famous music hall not too far from there, and they would go to Graham’s after hours and then stay at one of the on-site cabins. Pearl Bailey was a regular. Little Richard was a regular. You can only guess how wild it probably got. The restaurant is gone now, and the only thing left standing is one lonely cabin. It’s being used as a storage shed by a law firm.”
Fitzgerald’s Motel, Myrtle Beach, SC
“The owners of Fitzgerald’s also owned a music club called Charlie’s; this was another place where Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, and Duke Ellington hung out. The motel is legendary because of these stars but also because there was a KKK shootout there in 1950. FBI files show hundreds of rounds were fired. When the dust settled, they discovered that one of the men under his KKK regalia was a policeman. They’ve tried to hide it ever since. Herbert Riley, the president of the Carver Street Economic Renaissance Corp., is working to make sure the story doesn’t get buried. But people don’t want to know the truth. They don’t want to face that reality.”
The Apollo Theater, Harlem, NY
“I have documented close to 400 Green Book sites in Harlem — it was Victor Green’s home base — and the Apollo Theater is obviously an iconic site, but it’s interesting because there were no other travel guides that really featured nightclubs in that way. There was also the Savoy Nightclub in Boston, and Club Alabam and Jack’s Chicken Shack in L.A. And there were so many different kinds too. I found one that I think may have been a sex club, with transgender people and drag queens. It’s wild. The Green Book had everything: funeral homes, haberdasheries, sanitariums. It’s a tremendous example of black entrepreneurship.”
About the authors:
Candacy Taylor is an award-winning author, photographer and cultural documentarian. She is working with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service to develop a traveling exhibition on the Green Book, and her book Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Mobility in America will be published by Abrams in 2019. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Newsweek, among others. To follow Taylor’s Green Book project, sign the guestbook.
Ashlea Halpern is the co-founder of Cartogramme, editor-at-large for AFAR Media, and a contributor to Condé Nast Traveler, Airbnbmag, NYMag, Bon Appétit, and Wired, among others.
