The History of the Green Book
WHITFIELD: Decades ago, in the segregated Jim Crow era, an African- American traveler would want to pack along a certain book, a guide called "The Green Book." This once necessary little book is getting a new modern-day audience.</s>WHITFIELD (voice-over): The pictures on his wall are from 50 years ago, but Ernest Green remembers it like yesterday.</s>ERNEST GREEN: Well I think what stands out is the fact that I as a teenager thought that desegregating the schools in Little Rock was an important part of progress for African-Americans.</s>WHITFIELD: Green was one of the Little Rock nine, a group of African- American students who enrolled in Central High School in the Arkansas capital in 1957. While Green was making history in the schools, his family navigated the segregated roads using a little-known guide for African-American families.</s>GREEN: The Green Book was a -- I think an institution in black life. It was one of those unknown survival tools for black people that had to move around the country. I was a teenager, so I knew that the Green Book was a necessity for us to have a place to stay.</s>WHITFIELD: A place to stay, a place to eat, even a car repair shop that would be friendly to blacks, all pulled together in this directory. Decades later, Green had forgotten about the precious resource until a recent conversation with Calvin Ramsey, a playwright, an author.</s>GREEN: He mentioned that he was doing a play around this book. And as he described it, I remembered that I had had a personal experience with the Green Book. My aunt and mother mapping out a program for us to travel from Little Rock to Hampton, Virginia, for my sister's graduation.</s>WHITFIELD: Personal tales like this inspired the playwright, and he learned about the travel guide's 1936 genesis.</s>CALVIN RAMSEY: Well, Victor Green, an African-American gentleman who had traveled himself and had hardships on the road, embarrassment, embarrassing situations that he didn't want to see his people continue to have. So he said, "If I can do something about this, I will."</s>WHITFIELD: The idea took off. And year after year, the Green Book grew, providing resources for all 50 states.</s>RAMSEY: Everything from lodging to restaurants, to beauty shops, to barber shops, mechanic shops, later on, doctor's offices, dentists, pretty much anything you would need on the open road.</s>WHITFIELD: As the book gained popularity, it also picked up a major sponsor.</s>RAMSEY: Once Standard Oil got involved, they hired professional marketers, they set up an office in New York, they hired men who had training in this type of thing. Then they started training African- American men how to run their own service stations. And from there, they could sell more Green Books.</s>WHITFIELD: Today, Ramsey takes his children's book, "Ruth and the Green Book," to elementary schools, bringing old tales to a new audience. And in the process, picking up on a dream that the creator of the Green Book held dearly.</s>GREEN: Travel, exposure, knowledge, all of it is fatal to prejudice. It requires people to think broader to this idea about universality that begins to see people as people.</s>WHITFIELD: Big lessons from the little guide that history almost forgot.</s>WHITFIELD: The stage play inspired by the Green Book tells the story of a Holocaust survivor spending the night with a black family after being refused service to stay at a hotel. Arab nation revolution in the air. First Tunisia, then Egypt, this is Yemen today. You know what the question is? Where next?