Of philadelphia my name is andy director of author events. I do have one unfortunate update to our program rick burns will not participate in our discussion this evening due to a work related incident. However, the good news you will see a sneak preview of his new documentary which will be aired on pbs later this year and based on ten years of research by our guest. A curator with more than 30 years experience, doctor Gretchen Sorin has consulted with 250 institutions including smithsonian, Jewish Museum in the near state historical association. She is a director of the cooperstown drip program of the State University of new york and the author of in the spirit of martin, the living legacy of doctor Martin Luther king junior. And through the eyes of others, African Americans in identity and american art. In her new book draw th driving while black just out today professor soren tells the story of an an dispensable green book that reshaped the africanamerican traveling experience throughout our segregated land and help drive the civil rights movement. Please welcome Gretchen Sorin to the free library of philadelphia. [applause] thank you. Good evening. It is wonderful to be in the great city of philadelphia. I apologize that rick was not able to join us this evening, he had a little bit of an emergency and hes in italy but i hope that you will enjoy the preview of our film that he sent along. I am going to talk, im sure many of you have seen the green book movie and im going to talk this evening about a broader story, that story is about the automobile in the role that the automobile played in africanamerican lives. I would like you all to think of how important your mobility is to you, how important is it that you are able to travel where you want to, when you want to, how important is that to american liberty. The ability to travel freely is something that all of us in this room take for granted but if you think about the role that liberty and mobility played for africanamericans very much of american history, African Americans were prohibited from traveling freely. Travel in the idea of journey essential to the africanamerican experience. The ideal of the Middle Passage and enslavement begins a journey for africanamericans. It is central to what it means to be black in this country. But the idea of cattle is about forced travel. This is the past, and they save please let Benjamin Mcdaniel pass to doctor in virginia and return on monday or tuesday for mrs. Madison, june 1, 1843. So africanamericans traveling had to have passes information. Freedom is so important to many enslaved persons that they ran away they sold themselves and exercised their freedom movement. Excuse me, i have a five euro granddaughter and she gave me the kindergarten cold. The great migration and the journey for africanamericans in the story of the greatest Mass Movement of people in this countrys history. Seeking Job Opportunities in the north and fleeing racism and poverty in the south and as many as 7 million africanamericans left their home seeking refuge in subsidies of chicago, new york, detroit, new york where my parents moved in philadelphia where my uncle moved. With expanding opportunities in education and employment came more and more black citizens among the ranks of the black middle class. The freedom of mobility to go where you want to, when you wanted became essential. It also came to mean the ability to avoid the indignity of the jim crow bust in railroad car. And here is a jim crow bus, in the first half of the 20th century behavior and etiquette for africanamericans was proscribed by geography and by customs and if you are from a particular place you knew what the rules were. Rules changed from place to place throughout the United States. Each state had its own rules, each community had its own expected etiquette and is still the not know the rules of racial etiquette for example, particular driving etiquette was also expected. Africanamericans faced segregation in most aspects of public travel and accommodation in the south when it was over but in the north it was dictated by customs of buses, taxis, trains, hotels, beaches and any place the people gather. This is a Jim Crow Railroad car. Insulting, humiliating selfie as dependent on timetables. They were only supposed to ride in the south, many ran in the north as well and africanamericans, even if you purchased a firstclass ticket and was not expected to go into the jim crow car. This was columbia engulfed car in 1929. And you can see the word colored on the backseats the automobile gave africans freedom. It freed black travelers from the puny of the Jim Crow Railroad car in the freedom of movement and offer dignity. Africanamericans found that the segregated trains that gave them no dignity. Here is your own private rolling living room, if you are driving in your own car with private space that was protected, you are free from the segregated insult and free from listening to the bus driver to tell you to move to the back of the bus and you are freed from the railcar that might be right behind the engine. This is really an important change in africanamerican life, the automobile. By the 1950s with the interstate highway system upwardly mobile like family were able to travel and become travel consumers and they started to consume travel just as they consumed things like refrigerators and television and they use the dollars in their disposable income to purchase automobiles and campers and hotel rooms and restaurant meals. With her history of forced travel, it was important for the black middle class to travel for leisure. They chose to travel because they could. Often parents worked hard to make sure their children were not aware of the indignity that they faced, the children installed in the backseat of these cars were not always even aware of the indignity their parents faced nor were they aware of the danger that their parents faced on the road. If you think about the make and model of automobiles, the make and model is very much tied to identity. Africanamericans purchased large cars, we know this from Market Studies that were done of africanamericans that were conducted in the 1840s and 1950s by Research Firms for the black newspaper. Africanamerican motorists preferred large heavy buicks and automobiles, those cars that we would call gas guzzlers. These are not small cars, i think africanamericans preferred large cars because they offer protection, they were hard to turn over, they were a place to sleep if necessary, you can carry blankets and pillows and you can sleep in your car and you can carry water for the radiator an extra fan belt and you carry the big heavy coleman coolers full of food because you could not stop at a restaurant. Black motorist created a home away from home in their automobiles. This is an ad for the Buick Electra and it says all the electrolux is a fireplace. So the elector was a heavy car and you can sleep and if you needed to. When civil rights worker needed a car to travel to rural mississippi, he chose an oldsmobile rocket 88, the rocket was large enough to enable to stretch out on the front seat and it responded immediately if he hit the accelerator enabling him to get away from her pursuing car. This is a picture of the rocket 88. And we know that he died beside his car in his driveway shot by a sniper on june 12, 1963. Africanamericans also saw their automobile assemble class status. This is a cadillac on harlem street. Africanamericans were often prevented by discrimination from purchasing houses, you cannot buy a house because your neighborhood was redlined and banks would not give you a mortgage. And therefore the car became the largest and most important purchase and therefore africanamericans use their disposable income to buy beautiful cars and you heard the stereotype that all africanamericans fought cadillacs. Africanamericans purchase cadillacs in exactly the same proportion percentage as white americans, 3 of africanamericans purchase cadillacs. That is the stereotype that all africanamericans had those cadillacs. The preferred car was the buick in those mobile. But for africanamericans travel by car posed a paradox. Africanamericans had the freedom to travel but they were forced to stay in segregated black neighborhoods in segregated black Tourist Accommodation that would accept them. I would like you to think for a minute about what it was like for all americans before there were cars. Before the automobile. Before the automobile people generally stayed put, they do not travel very far at all from their own neighborhoods. White people generally stayed in white neighborhoods, black people generally stayed in black neighborhoods in some poor neighborhoods. I buy side but the country was segregated by race. Now think about what happened with the automobile. With their cars, africanamericans crisscross the country traveling through white spaces to get from a safe black space to another safe black space to get from a black neighborhood to a black resort, they had to go through a variety of white spaces where they were unwelcome, they face fines, billboards, posters and objects that range from insulting to frightening. They asserted their right to unfettered travel by going where they wanted, when they wanted and this could be dangerous. The landscape for africanamerican travelers was thought psychologically and emotionally damaging messages. This is just one example of those messages. This is a restaurant chain that was popular on the west coast and started in Salt Lake City and diners entered the restaurant to the giant kunz mail. This is the banner that walked under welcomed visitors to baucus land, the widest people. Of course there were hundreds of sundown towns in the United States and africanamericans traveled they were faced with towns that had signs that said if you are black, you needed to be out of town before sundown. In these communities were all over the United States, many, many in the midwest, many in the west and even a few in connecticut in the northeast. There is a great story that Thurgood Marshall told, he was standing on a train car a train platform waiting for a train and a man came up to him and said, this is before Thurgood Marshall was a Supreme Court justice when he was a lawyer for the naacp and the man said nager boy what are you doing in this town. He says i am waiting for the train and the man says you better be out of this town before sundown because the sun has never set with a nager in this town and thats a story that he tells in his autobiography. Some africanamericans face all kinds of intimidation and even real dangers when they travel. And this is a fair and colorado. I have to wonder why they were wearing these outfits on the first will. So africanamericans often depended on travel guides like the negro motorist green book which was produced in new york city. How many of you heard of the negro motorist green book, how many have you have heard of all the other dozen travel guide that existed, there were many different travel guides for a variety of audiences if you are part of a church group or a fraternity or sorority, there were guides that found special housing for you, there were guys for show people in many different guides, the back of black newspapers, there were travel guides as well, the green book is the most longlasting of africanamerican travel guide and the reason it was so longlasting was because of their relationship with standard oil. Which is exxon gas stations. As was owned by standard oil and they saw africanamericans as a market and they had enlightened self interest and they thought these people have money and we would like to get some of it and they had a policy of nondiscrimination in their bathrooms. At their gas stations and so africanamericans very often preferred sco gasoline and they gave away the green book and that helped Victor Greene to make his green book successful. The idea for the green book was based on jewish travel guide, Victor Greene writes in the very first issue of the green book that his jewish brother engaged in the idea for the travel gui guide. If you are a jewishamerican and traveling, you also needed to be concerned about places to stay and very often if you call the hotel and said your name was schwartz or ruben you would find that suddenly they had no rooms available. So jewish newspapers and jews guides the told you places you could stay in places you could observe the dietary laws. Green believes that travel was fatal to prejudice. He believed it people went out across the country it would help to defeat prejudice in this country and this is a quote from the innocents abroad. This is Victor Greene and his wife elma, he was a postal worker he open a business in harlem in the Green Publishing Company. What is so important in the reason i talk and show elma is because Victor Greene died in 1960 and the Green Publishing Company was operated by elma green and by four other women so it was a five woman operation and this was a business of Publishing Business that was unusual for women to be working in publishing in this time. Much less running a Publishing Company. But she continues to run the Publishing Company until late 1960s. Victor greene had a variety of ways of finding places to put in his green book and i have to make sure elma is in there. One of the ways is like sending out postcards and letters and asking his travelers people have good experiences traveling to send him information about the places that they stayed. The green book included gas stations and this one is in essence station, hotels, motels, restaurants, ymcas, churches, doctors, beauticians, barbers and an article, one article in each issue an article might tell you about philadelphia and the thing that you could do in c and philadelphia or it might tell you about chicago, usually or geographically situated and they told you the places where you might be welcome to visit. The green book also courted the black middle class. It reflects black middleclass values about light and well mannered behavior and here i think you can see that you have a very charming middleclass couple with matched luggage and you can see a little bit of their car and you can see their suburban neighborhood in the background. It was the black middle class that could afford to travel in green shows us the ideal black traveling couple. Over the course of the life of the green book the content expanded from just new york, new jersey and connecticut to the entire east coast and then the entire United States and then all of north america and finally to europe and asia. But there were other travel guides like this one, this is the baltimore travel map that was a part of the africanamerican newspaper. Other guides were called the go guide, travel guide, the travel guide and draws american to name a few. You can also see the middleclass with a couple playing golf in the upper righthand corner. Many of the places that were listed in the guide especially the early ones were either ymca dorm rooms were the homes of africanamerican families. So if you had an empty room or an extra room, women rented their rooms out and they provide a Good Breakfast as a way to make extra money for their families, this is a ymca room. This is the rock if any of you have visited the africanamerican museum in washington, d. C. , using the rock which was a leisure place to stay in kittery main, an africanamerican house that was run by hazel and Clinton Sinclair and this was the original environment. This is a place that was away from the beach, the beaches were segregated in court smith and kittery, you could go and you could stay for a week or two week and you could enjoy your meals, hazel was a really good cook and she catered meals for the White Community as well as the black community. There were other places to stay like vacancies court in hot springs arkansas which was a motor hotel and perfect for the automobile, you could park outside your door, most of these places were owned by africanamericans but some were owned by white americans but catered only to black people. These are some advertisements from the green book and they offer the same values and products that were offered for whites in parallel establishments. Some of the folks that operated these places clearly place themselves in the ad to show readers they were black. In this grainy picture is of she and enjoy National Park. I know the National Parks like to say that you are always welcome at the National Park in the National Parks were also open to africanamericans but the problem was all the parks facilities, the guesthouses, the hotels, the restaurants were operated by private individuals and they discriminated. So this is the picnic ground for negroes at shenandoah National Park. It took a long time for the National Park to be fully integrated. I would like to talk for a few minutes about the role of the automobile and the civil rights movement. It was really very important the automobile played a key and pivotal role in the civil rights movement. You cannot have it without the automobile. This is were supermarkets and where he is tying himself to doctor Martin Luther king jr. And its very important and very dangerous. If the White Community was concerned about a king coming to your community. Excuse me. The man at the front of the line is a jazz singer and hes traveling back to the gaston hotel in birmingham after participation in the pickup line. This is the gaston motel after it was bombed and provided spaces for civil rights workers to stay in people working civil rights need a places to stay when they went south in need of places to eat. In these places were the target of bombing. Some of these places were listed in the green book including the Lorraine Motel which is where Martin Luther king was assassinated. Consider how important it would be to have an automobile if your job was to travel around it entire county and register voters. She had to travel an entire county and what if you had to travel an entire state and register voters. This is called the jenkins microbus and its a pretty marvelous bus and part of it is at that africanamerican museum acquired edition. This bus was used to travel all over the state of alabama to register voters and also used as a school to train voters and literacy so they can pass the literacy test and it was a haven for children and used as a meeting space. It was so important to be able to have mobility when you are trying to register voters and bring people into the civil rights movement. But the boycott is perhaps mostly the significant of the automobile. There was bus boycotts all over the south. Here you see Martin Luther king helping some women into a car so they can get to work. In order for them to bankrupt the montgomery bus system it was important for them to be able to continue to be able to go to work and move about the city and the way they were able to move about the city was through the purchase of a fleet of automobiles. So Martin Luther king and the bus boycott purchased automobiles and people who already had cards helped people to drive to work so they could continue to keep their job and they were able to cut the bus revenue by 69 and still keep their jobs. But only because they had automobiles to take people to work. So the automobile becomes a weapon in the arsenal of the civil rights movement. It was also key when people needed to get from the airport to the hotels. Since calves were segregated and black calves were not allowed to pick up people otto tells in people flying into various cities for protest would rent a car and that would be their way of getting to the hotel. How does the story and. In 1964lb jake passes civil rights legislation that extends voting rights. It outlaws segregation and immediately all public accommodations are open to africanamericans. So the major chain hotels, sheridan, howard johnson, hilton or open to africanamerican because they can stay at those places, they do stay at those places. So the question i have is does the story end . Or does it remain an issue in america. This is castillo who was murdered in his automobile by a Minnesota Police officer in 2016 in Falcon Heights minnesota. The officer was acquitted of manslaughter because he was simply afraid of castile simply because the color of his skin. This is a cartoon by Stuart Carlson who is an editorial cartoonist for milwaukee journal fentanyl. It is funny but it is also not funny. I guess the question is are we still in this place. Has the story ended or does it continue. And how do we address the problem that we have now with africanamericans in the automobile. The bring book goes out of business in the black hotels signing is the black hotel gradually lose their clientele in the large chain hotel floors in the black hotels go out of business. But the landscape is forever changed with the help of ordinary men and women choosing the automobile and travel as their weapon. If you have a question raised her hand and we will run a microphone to you, please ask your question in the form of a question. Was that little girl was that you . It was. It was. Yes it was. [applause] [laughter] my father was a photographer and it was a piece of film that i found in day gave all of my old home movies to rick and he printed them digitally and that was one of the pieces of film. [inaudible question] im in exhibition curator primarily and i was doing an exposition in Saratoga Springs new york and a colleague of mine who wrote a book about leisure in Saratoga Springs asked me five heard of the green book, 20 years ago. And i had never heard of at that point and i was intrigued in one of my graduate student tuition from chicago, i was told they had were Nothing University of chicago and one of my graduate students copied it for me and that was my first book. I started with the green book but as they got into the research i realize the story is much broader than the green book, its really about the automobile. And the way the automobile change africanamerican life into the story expanded from their. Use of the green book was at gas stations for free, is not right. Some of them were given away for free and others of them were sold for a dollar. How do they make money. Green sold them into sold them out of his harm from or harlem office. Standard oil purchase them and they had a contract to buy thousands of copies. Is there any effort to put blocks alon enter blocks along e roads where they went as to sayt this was the green book statione people went to . The National Truck for his dark reservation has been trying to put up markers of some of the sites, a large number of the sites no longer stand because they were urban renewed. In the late 60s when urban renewal went through cities they often bulldozed entire black neighborhoods in many of those places are gone. So if you look at my capital city of albany, the large part of the black neighborhood was wiped up by urban renewal and so yes there are some markers that will be going up that historic cream book sites and the trust has been working on that. I want to thank you for writing the book and include that experience. I want to know many of the things that you have collected will be part of a permanent exhibit someday. Thats a good question. I think the movie the film will premiere in detroit, motor city and detroit is a Historical Society and will do an exposition im not sure if itll be on automobile, travel on the green book. Do you know the name of the jewish greenberg and other books about the. The research that i did and actually had a jewish historian helping me out because i cannot find anything and theres a small volume called the daily kashrut and it was a publication that basically said you had to observe the dietary laws and what you could eat, you could have this or hersheys chocolate, certain things that were kosher and in the back of that there was a listing of places to stay and we decided it was probably the guide before the guide that you and i were talking about they came out in the late 50s or early 60s. Another question from the audience. I had a modern copy of the green book thinking we could travel south and learn something more but the modern one that we. Is only what the state have now and not really where you could go and learn something. More of what the state laws are in terms of equality rather than what was in the past. I was looking for something in the past. You can buy reprints of the original green book but there also on the New York Public Library website. If you type in New York Public Library, green book it will all pop up. I heard the holiday and specifically were founded as places that would not segregate and be all over the country, is not right . I do not know the answer to that. But wouldnt that be lovely. [laughter] a few more questions. There was an increasing number as we get into the late 60s, there was an increasing number of people who were looking for integrated accommodation. I dont know the specific history about holiday in. I will look it up though. I do know there was an increasing interest in integrated accommodation and some liberal americans, white americans were seeking those places that were integrated. How did you respond and what was the deal that allowed him to sell the book or specific rights to the greenberg. There were two men that were hired by standard oil to market to the black community. Both of them found when they were traveling for a company business, they had to use the green book and that led to relationship between standard oil and the green book. [inaudible question] is it known or unknown. I think it is probably forgotten. Okay. [inaudible question] [laughter] please join me and thinking Gretchen Sorin. [applause] weeknights this month we are featuring book tv programs showcasing what is available every weekend on cspan2. Thursday we will take a look at bestsellers, first journalist niclas kristof and sherwood done on their book type rope about facing the working class and rural america. They were interviewed by jeff merkley and then tara westerberg recalls growing up in idaho mounds and her introduction to formal education at age 17 in her book educated, memoir. Later turning point usa founder charlie kirk and his book the market doctrine about the new conservative agenda, watch book tv this week and every weekend on cspan2. Next journalist David Zucchino on wilmingtons lies on the 1898 right wilmington North Carolina where white supremacist killed black men and displaced hundreds of africanamerican families, this is one hour