In 1936, Victor Hugo Green began publishing The Negro Motorist Green Book. It was a project, however, that ultimately subverted the Black economy and the Black community. It tells about a subversive project: one that was designed to subvert Jim Crow but also contributed to the subversion of legal segregation and the denial of basic civil rights. It tells the story of Black resistance to White repression, harassment, and tyranny. It is the story of a lost civilization: one that deserves to be lost but never forgotten.
This book is about the Green Book: one annual traveler’s guidebook but so much more. Reading this book made it clear that my ignorance was part of the plan it made me complicit.
I was naïve: totally unaware of pervasive racial oppression and an ever-present threat of violence that lay just below the surface, waiting to burst forth against children who didn’t look like me. I grew up in green, suburban neighborhoods running with my friends and blissfully unaware of how my country treated so many who did not enjoy our privileges and freedoms. Things I took for granted were legally denied to Black citizens, but this was not in any way part of my experience. This stubborn fact kept coming back to me as I read this book.
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