Kansas City, MO - The Negro Motorist Green Book provided listings across the US where black business was welcomed, helping African American travelers navigate a segregated 20th Century.
Victor H. Green created the first guidebook in the mid-1930's. Green was a postal employee and travel writer based in Harlem, New York.
The Green Book was critical for African Americans to know where they could shop, eat, and grab a motel room without being hassled.
And they needed to know which towns were "sundown towns" - those towns where they had to leave before dark.
"And there was no way of knowing you were going into a 'sundown town'," says Debra Dandridge, field archivist and curator at the African American Experience at the University of Kansas. "It was kept quiet, places like Pratt, Kansas. So you just kinda had to know."
The Green Book evolved into an opportunity for "African American businesses to promote themselves", says Dandridge. "They would pay for the ads, so that helped it" continue to be published.