Transcripts For CSPAN2 Gretchen Sorin Driving While Black 20

Due to a workrelated trip. The good news, you will see a sneak preview of his new documentary which will be aired on pbs later this year and is based on ten years of research, a curator with 30 years experience, doctor Gretchen Sorin has consulted for 250 institutions including the smithsonian, the Jewish Museum and the new York State Historical association. She is the director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program of the State University of new york and the author of in the spirit of martin, the living the living legacy of Martin Luther king jr. And through the eyes of others, africanamericans and identity in american art. In her new book driving while black African American travel and the road to civil rights, just out today, Gretchen Sorin tells the story of the indispensable green book which reshaped the African American traveling experience throughout our segregated land and helped drive the nascent Civil Rights Movement. Please welcome Gretchen Sorin. [applause] it is wonderful to be in the great city of philadelphia and i apologize that rick wasnt able to join us this evening, he had a little bit of an emergency, he is in italy but i hope you will enjoy a preview of our film he sends along. Im sure many of you have seen the green book movie and im going to talk this evening about a broader story about the automobile, the role the automobile played in africanamerican life. I want you to think about how important your mobility is to you, how important it is to travel when you want to come how important is that to american liberty, the ability to travel freely is something all of us take for granted but if you think about the role mobility played for africanamericans, very much of american history, africanamericans were prohibited from traveling freely. Travel and the idea of journey is central to the africanamerican experience. The idea of the Middle Passage and enslavement begins the journey for africanamericans and is central to what it means to be black in this country but the idea of forced travel, this is a pass and Benjamin Mcdaniel to the new market, shenandoah county, return on monday or tuesday to montpelier for mrs. Madison, june 1st, 1843. Africanamericans traveling had to have permission. Freedom was so important to many enslaved persons that they ran away, they exercised their freedom of movement. Excuse me. I have a 5yearold granddaughter giving me the kindergarten cold. In the early Twentieth Century the great migration, the next step in the journey for africanamericans is the story of the greatest Mass Movement of people in history seeking Job Opportunities in the north and fleeing racism and poverty in the south as many as 7 million africanamericans left their home seeking refuge in chicago, new york, detroit, newark where my parents moved in philadelphia where my uncle moved. With expanding opportunities and employment came more black citizens among the ranks of the black middle class, freedom of mobility to go where you want, when you want became essential but it came to me, the ability to avoid the indignity of the jim crow bus in the Jim Crow Railroad car and here is a jim crow bus. In the first half of the Twentieth Century behavior and etiquette for africanamericans was prescribed by geography and custom. If you were from a particular place you knew what the rules were, the rules changed from place to place throughout the united states. Each state had its own rule. Each community had its own expected etiquette, and still didnt know the rules, particular driving etiquette was also a thing. Africanamericans faced segregation in most aspects of public travel and accommodation in the south. It was over. In the north it was dictated by customs, of buses, trains, hotels, restaurants and just about any place people gather. This is the Jim Crow Railroad car, insulting, humiliating selfy and although they were only supposed to run in the south many ran in the north as well. Even if they purchased the first class ticket also expected to go into the jim crow car. It is a columbia golf railroad car from 1929 and you can see the word colored on the back seat. The automobile gave africanamericans freedom to free black travelers from the tyranny of the Jim Crow Railroad car offered freedom of movement and offered dignity. Africanamericans found the segregated trains, no dignity and here is your own rolling living room. If you were driving in your own car private space was protected, freed from listening to the bus driver tell you to move to the back of the bus, freed from the railroad car that might be around the engine. This was an important change in africanamerican life, the automobile. By the 1950s, the interstate highway system upwardly mobile black families were able to travel and they started to consume travel just as they consumed refrigerators, they used the dollars and disposable income to purchase automobiles and campers and hotel rooms and restaurant meals and with 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 indignities they faced. The children installed in the back seat of these cars were not always aware of the indignities or the danger their parents faced when they went on the road. If you think about the make and model of automobiles, it was tied to identity. Africanamericans purchased large cars. We know this from Market Studies that were done of africanamericans, Research Firms for black newspapers, they preferred large heavy buick and automobile, cars we would now call gas guzzlers, not small cars. I think African Americans preferred large cars because they offered protection, were hard to turn over, you could carry blankets and pillows and could sleep in your car and carry water for the radiator, you carried those big heavy coleman coolers full of food because you couldnt stop at a restaurant, black motorists created a home away from home in their automobiles and this was an ad for the Buick Electra and it says all the electra lacks is a fireplace. The electra with a heavy car and you could sleep in it if you needed to. When medgar evers needed a car to travel to rural mississippi, he used an oldsmobile rocket 88, large enough to enable bigger to stretch out to the front seat and responded immediately if he hit the accelerator enabling him to get away from a pursuing car. This is a picture of the rocket 88 and medgar evers died in his car in his driveway shot by a sniper on june 12th, 1963. Africanamericans saw their automobiles as a symbol of class status. This was the cadillac on a harlem street. It was prevented by discrimination from purchasing, you couldnt buy a house because your neighborhood was redlined and not give you a mortgage, therefore the car became the largest and most important purchase and africanamericans use disposable income to buy beautiful cars. You may have heard the stereotype that all africanamericans bought cadillacs. Africanamericans purchased cadillacs in the same proportion percentage as white americans. That is a stereotype all africanamericans had those cadillacs, the preferred car was the buick or oldsmobile but for africanamericans travel by car posed a paradox, they had the freedom to travel but were forced to stay in segregated black neighborhoods and tourist accommodations. I want you to think about what it was like for all americans before there were cars, before the automobile, before the automobile people generally stayed put, they didnt travel very far at all for their own neighborhoods, white people generally stayed in white neighborhoods, black people stayed in black neighborhoods. In some poor neighborhoods black and white people lived sidebyside but the country was generally segregated by race. Think about what happens with the automobile. With their cars africanamericans crisscrossed the country traveling through white spaces to get 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 in welcome, they faced fines, billboards, posters and objects that ranged from insulting to frightening. They asserted their rights to unfettered travel by going where they wanted when they wanted and this could be dangerous. The landscape for africanamerican travelers was fraught with psychologically and emotionally damaging messages and this is just one example of the kinds of messages. This the restaurant chain that was popular on the west coast, started in salt lake city, diners entered the restaurant through the giant mouth. This is the manner that welcomed visitors to greenville, texas, greenville welcome, the blackest land, the whitest people and of course there were hundreds of sundown towns in the united states. As africanamericans traveled they were faced with towns that had signs that said if you were black you needed to be out of town before sundown and these communities were all over the united states, many in the midwest, many in the west and even a few in the northeast. There is a great story that Thurgood Marshall told, he was standing on a train car waiting for a train to shreveport and a man came up to him and said this was before Thurgood Marshall, the man says to him what are you doing in this town and he says i am waiting for the train to shreveport and the man says you better be out of this town before sundown because the sun never set with a bigger in this town. There was a story Thurgood Marshall tells in his autobiography. Some africanamericans face all kinds of intimidation, dangerous when they travel and this was in colorado. I have to wonder why they were wearing these outfits. It often depended on travel guides in new york city. Many of you heard of the negro motorist screen book, and there were many travel guides for a variety of audiences. If you were part of a church group or fraternity or sorority there were guides for special housing, many different guides in the black of back of newspapers and magazines, the green book is the most longlasting of the travel guides, it was longlasting because of their relationship with standard oil, exxon, it was owned by standard oil and they saw africanamericans as a market and they had enlightened selfinterest, they thought these people, we would like to get some of it and they had a policy of nondiscrimination at their gas stations, africanamericans often referred the gasoline and gave away green books. To make his green book successful. Victor green writes in the first issue of the green book that jewish brethren gave him the idea for the travel guide. If you were jewishamerican and traveling you need to be concerned. Very often if you call the hotel and said your name was ruben you would find suddenly they had no rooms available. Jewish newspapers and jewish guides, places that you could stand places you could observe dietary laws. Green believed travel was fatal to prejudice. Of people went across the country it would help to defeat prejudice in this country and this is a quote from mark twain, the innocents abroad, travel is fatal to prejudice and victor green adopted that as his mantra. This is victor green and his wife,. Green was a postal worker, he opened a business in harlem, he opened the green Publishing Company. What is so important, the reason i show this is victor green died in 1960 and the Publishing Company was operated by our mother green and four other women. It was a 5 woman operation in this was a business, Publishing Business was unusual for women to be working in publishing in this time. Go much less running a Publishing Company. How the green continues to run the Publishing Company until the late 1960s. Victor green had a variety of ways of finding the green book and, make sure our mom is in there. One of the ways was sending postcards and letters and asking his travelers, people with good experiences traveling in places where they stayed. Or it might tell you about chicago. They usually were geographically situated and they told to the places where you might be welcomed to visit. The green book also ported the black middle class and reflects black middle class values about white and well mannered behavior. Here i think you can see that. You have a very charming middleclass couple with matched luggage. You can sample a bit of their car and you can see their suburban neighborhood in the background. It was a black middle class that could afford to travel, and green shows up 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, then the entire united states, then all of north america and finally, europe, africa and asia. But there were other travel guides like this one. This is the Baltimore Afroamerican travel map that was part of the afroamerican newspaper. The guides were called the go guide, travel guide, the travel guide, just to name a few. You can also see the middleclass here with the 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 or the home of africanamerican families. If you had an empty room or an extra room, women rented their rooms out and provided Good Breakfast as a way to make extra money for the families. This is a ymca room. This is the rock, if any of you visited the African American museum in washington, d. C. , you have seen the rock for rock rest, which was a leisure, place to stay in maine. It was an africanamerican guest house that was run by hazel and Clayton Sinclair and this is the rock in its original environment. This was a place that was away from the beach. The beaches were segregated, but you could go and stay for a week or two weeks at rock rest. You could enjoy your meals at rock rest. April apparently was really good cook and she catered meals to the White Community as well as to the black community. There were other places to stay like mackenzies court in hot springs, arkansas, which was in a motorhome belt and perfect for the automobile. You could park right 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. They offered the same values and products that were offered for whites in parallel establishments. Some of the folks that operated these places clearly placed themselves in the ads to show readers that they were black. And this grainy picture is of Shenandoah National park. I know the national park, youre always welcome at the national park, and the National Parks were always open to africanamericans. The problem was that all of the park facilities, the guest houses, the hotels, restaurants were operated by private individuals, and they discriminate. So this is picnic grounds for negroes at Shenandoah National park. It took a long time for the National Parks to be fully integrated. I would like to talk just 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 payable role in the Civil Rights Movement. You couldnt have the Civil Rights Movement without the automobile. This is where supermarkets and where it clearly timed itself to dr. Martin luther king. Very, very important and very dangerous if you were, the White Community was concerned about king coming to your community. The man at the front of this line is a jazz singer, and he is traveling back to the motel in birmingham after participation in this picket line. This is the gaston motel after it was bombed. Gaston provided spaces for civil rights workers to stay. The Civil Rights Movement, people working civil rights needed places to stay when they went south. They need places to eat. These places were the targets of bombings. Some of these places were listed in the green book, including the Lorraine Motel which is a place where Martin Luther king was assassinated. Now, consider how important it would be to have an automobile if your job was to travel around an entire county and register voters. If you had to travel and entire county or if you had to travel and entire state and register voters. This is called the jenkins microbus, and its a pretty marvelous bus. Apparently part of it is is not the African American museum, a recently acquired addition. This bus was used to travel all over the state of alabama to register voters, but also is used as the school to train voters in literacy so they could pass the literacy test. And it was a haven for children and was used as a meeting space. So it was so important to be able to have mobility when you were trying to register voters and bring people into the Gretchen Sorin<\/a> has consulted for 250 institutions including the smithsonian, the Jewish Museum<\/a> and the new York State Historical<\/a> association. She is the director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program<\/a> of the State University<\/a> of new york and the author of in the spirit of martin, the living the living legacy of Martin Luther<\/a> king jr. And through the eyes of others, africanamericans and identity in american art. In her new book driving while black African American<\/a> travel and the road to civil rights, just out today, Gretchen Sorin<\/a> tells the story of the indispensable green book which reshaped the African American<\/a> traveling experience throughout our segregated land and helped drive the nascent Civil Rights Movement<\/a>. Please welcome Gretchen Sorin<\/a>. [applause] it is wonderful to be in the great city of philadelphia and i apologize that rick wasnt able to join us this evening, he had a little bit of an emergency, he is in italy but i hope you will enjoy a preview of our film he sends along. Im sure many of you have seen the green book movie and im going to talk this evening about a broader story about the automobile, the role the automobile played in africanamerican life. I want you to think about how important your mobility is to you, how important it is to travel when you want to come how important is that to american liberty, the ability to travel freely is something all of us take for granted but if you think about the role mobility played for africanamericans, very much of american history, africanamericans were prohibited from traveling freely. Travel and the idea of journey is central to the africanamerican experience. The idea of the Middle Passage<\/a> and enslavement begins the journey for africanamericans and is central to what it means to be black in this country but the idea of forced travel, this is a pass and Benjamin Mcdaniel<\/a> to the new market, shenandoah county, return on monday or tuesday to montpelier for mrs. Madison, june 1st, 1843. Africanamericans traveling had to have permission. Freedom was so important to many enslaved persons that they ran away, they exercised their freedom of movement. Excuse me. I have a 5yearold granddaughter giving me the kindergarten cold. In the early Twentieth Century<\/a> the great migration, the next step in the journey for africanamericans is the story of the greatest Mass Movement<\/a> of people in history seeking Job Opportunities<\/a> in the north and fleeing racism and poverty in the south as many as 7 million africanamericans left their home seeking refuge in chicago, new york, detroit, newark where my parents moved in philadelphia where my uncle moved. With expanding opportunities and employment came more black citizens among the ranks of the black middle class, freedom of mobility to go where you want, when you want became essential but it came to me, the ability to avoid the indignity of the jim crow bus in the Jim Crow Railroad<\/a> car and here is a jim crow bus. In the first half of the Twentieth Century<\/a> behavior and etiquette for africanamericans was prescribed by geography and custom. If you were from a particular place you knew what the rules were, the rules changed from place to place throughout the united states. Each state had its own rule. Each community had its own expected etiquette, and still didnt know the rules, particular driving etiquette was also a thing. Africanamericans faced segregation in most aspects of public travel and accommodation in the south. It was over. In the north it was dictated by customs, of buses, trains, hotels, restaurants and just about any place people gather. This is the Jim Crow Railroad<\/a> car, insulting, humiliating selfy and although they were only supposed to run in the south many ran in the north as well. Even if they purchased the first class ticket also expected to go into the jim crow car. It is a columbia golf railroad car from 1929 and you can see the word colored on the back seat. The automobile gave africanamericans freedom to free black travelers from the tyranny of the Jim Crow Railroad<\/a> car offered freedom of movement and offered dignity. Africanamericans found the segregated trains, no dignity and here is your own rolling living room. If you were driving in your own car private space was protected, freed from listening to the bus driver tell you to move to the back of the bus, freed from the railroad car that might be around the engine. This was an important change in africanamerican life, the automobile. By the 1950s, the interstate highway system upwardly mobile black families were able to travel and they started to consume travel just as they consumed refrigerators, they used the dollars and disposable income to purchase automobiles and campers and hotel rooms and restaurant meals and with 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 indignities they faced. The children installed in the back seat of these cars were not always aware of the indignities or the danger their parents faced when they went on the road. If you think about the make and model of automobiles, it was tied to identity. Africanamericans purchased large cars. We know this from Market Studies<\/a> that were done of africanamericans, Research Firms<\/a> for black newspapers, they preferred large heavy buick and automobile, cars we would now call gas guzzlers, not small cars. I think African American<\/a>s preferred large cars because they offered protection, were hard to turn over, you could carry blankets and pillows and could sleep in your car and carry water for the radiator, you carried those big heavy coleman coolers full of food because you couldnt stop at a restaurant, black motorists created a home away from home in their automobiles and this was an ad for the Buick Electra<\/a> and it says all the electra lacks is a fireplace. The electra with a heavy car and you could sleep in it if you needed to. When medgar evers needed a car to travel to rural mississippi, he used an oldsmobile rocket 88, large enough to enable bigger to stretch out to the front seat and responded immediately if he hit the accelerator enabling him to get away from a pursuing car. This is a picture of the rocket 88 and medgar evers died in his car in his driveway shot by a sniper on june 12th, 1963. Africanamericans saw their automobiles as a symbol of class status. This was the cadillac on a harlem street. It was prevented by discrimination from purchasing, you couldnt buy a house because your neighborhood was redlined and not give you a mortgage, therefore the car became the largest and most important purchase and africanamericans use disposable income to buy beautiful cars. You may have heard the stereotype that all africanamericans bought cadillacs. Africanamericans purchased cadillacs in the same proportion percentage as white americans. That is a stereotype all africanamericans had those cadillacs, the preferred car was the buick or oldsmobile but for africanamericans travel by car posed a paradox, they had the freedom to travel but were forced to stay in segregated black neighborhoods and tourist accommodations. I want you to think about what it was like for all americans before there were cars, before the automobile, before the automobile people generally stayed put, they didnt travel very far at all for their own neighborhoods, white people generally stayed in white neighborhoods, black people stayed in black neighborhoods. In some poor neighborhoods black and white people lived sidebyside but the country was generally segregated by race. Think about what happens with the automobile. With their cars africanamericans crisscrossed the country traveling through white spaces to get 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 in welcome, they faced fines, billboards, posters and objects that ranged from insulting to frightening. They asserted their rights to unfettered travel by going where they wanted when they wanted and this could be dangerous. The landscape for africanamerican travelers was fraught with psychologically and emotionally damaging messages and this is just one example of the kinds of messages. This the restaurant chain that was popular on the west coast, started in salt lake city, diners entered the restaurant through the giant mouth. This is the manner that welcomed visitors to greenville, texas, greenville welcome, the blackest land, the whitest people and of course there were hundreds of sundown towns in the united states. As africanamericans traveled they were faced with towns that had signs that said if you were black you needed to be out of town before sundown and these communities were all over the united states, many in the midwest, many in the west and even a few in the northeast. There is a great story that Thurgood Marshall<\/a> told, he was standing on a train car waiting for a train to shreveport and a man came up to him and said this was before Thurgood Marshall<\/a>, the man says to him what are you doing in this town and he says i am waiting for the train to shreveport and the man says you better be out of this town before sundown because the sun never set with a bigger in this town. There was a story Thurgood Marshall<\/a> tells in his autobiography. Some africanamericans face all kinds of intimidation, dangerous when they travel and this was in colorado. I have to wonder why they were wearing these outfits. It often depended on travel guides in new york city. Many of you heard of the negro motorist screen book, and there were many travel guides for a variety of audiences. If you were part of a church group or fraternity or sorority there were guides for special housing, many different guides in the black of back of newspapers and magazines, the green book is the most longlasting of the travel guides, it was longlasting because of their relationship with standard oil, exxon, it was owned by standard oil and they saw africanamericans as a market and they had enlightened selfinterest, they thought these people, we would like to get some of it and they had a policy of nondiscrimination at their gas stations, africanamericans often referred the gasoline and gave away green books. To make his green book successful. Victor green writes in the first issue of the green book that jewish brethren gave him the idea for the travel guide. If you were jewishamerican and traveling you need to be concerned. Very often if you call the hotel and said your name was ruben you would find suddenly they had no rooms available. Jewish newspapers and jewish guides, places that you could stand places you could observe dietary laws. Green believed travel was fatal to prejudice. Of people went across the country it would help to defeat prejudice in this country and this is a quote from mark twain, the innocents abroad, travel is fatal to prejudice and victor green adopted that as his mantra. This is victor green and his wife,. Green was a postal worker, he opened a business in harlem, he opened the green Publishing Company<\/a>. What is so important, the reason i show this is victor green died in 1960 and the Publishing Company<\/a> was operated by our mother green and four other women. It was a 5 woman operation in this was a business, Publishing Business<\/a> was unusual for women to be working in publishing in this time. Go much less running a Publishing Company<\/a>. How the green continues to run the Publishing Company<\/a> until the late 1960s. Victor green had a variety of ways of finding the green book and, make sure our mom is in there. One of the ways was sending postcards and letters and asking his travelers, people with good experiences traveling in places where they stayed. Or it might tell you about chicago. They usually were geographically situated and they told to the places where you might be welcomed to visit. The green book also ported the black middle class and reflects black middle class values about white and well mannered behavior. Here i think you can see that. You have a very charming middleclass couple with matched luggage. You can sample a bit of their car and you can see their suburban neighborhood in the background. It was a black middle class that could afford to travel, and green shows up 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, then the entire united states, then all of north america and finally, europe, africa and asia. But there were other travel guides like this one. This is the Baltimore Afroamerican<\/a> travel map that was part of the afroamerican newspaper. The guides were called the go guide, travel guide, the travel guide, just to name a few. You can also see the middleclass here with the 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 or the home of africanamerican families. If you had an empty room or an extra room, women rented their rooms out and provided Good Breakfast<\/a> as a way to make extra money for the families. This is a ymca room. This is the rock, if any of you visited the African American<\/a> museum in washington, d. C. , you have seen the rock for rock rest, which was a leisure, place to stay in maine. It was an africanamerican guest house that was run by hazel and Clayton Sinclair<\/a> and this is the rock in its original environment. This was a place that was away from the beach. The beaches were segregated, but you could go and stay for a week or two weeks at rock rest. You could enjoy your meals at rock rest. April apparently was really good cook and she catered meals to the White Community<\/a> as well as to the black community. There were other places to stay like mackenzies court in hot springs, arkansas, which was in a motorhome belt and perfect for the automobile. You could park right 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. They offered the same values and products that were offered for whites in parallel establishments. Some of the folks that operated these places clearly placed themselves in the ads to show readers that they were black. And this grainy picture is of Shenandoah National<\/a> park. I know the national park, youre always welcome at the national park, and the National Parks<\/a> were always open to africanamericans. The problem was that all of the park facilities, the guest houses, the hotels, restaurants were operated by private individuals, and they discriminate. So this is picnic grounds for negroes at Shenandoah National<\/a> park. It took a long time for the National Parks<\/a> to be fully integrated. I would like to talk just for a few minutes about the role of the automobile and the Civil Rights Movement<\/a>. It was really very important the automobile played a key and payable role in the Civil Rights Movement<\/a>. You couldnt have the Civil Rights Movement<\/a> without the automobile. This is where supermarkets and where it clearly timed itself to dr. Martin luther king. Very, very important and very dangerous if you were, the White Community<\/a> was concerned about king coming to your community. The man at the front of this line is a jazz singer, and he is traveling back to the motel in birmingham after participation in this picket line. This is the gaston motel after it was bombed. Gaston provided spaces for civil rights workers to stay. The Civil Rights Movement<\/a>, people working civil rights needed places to stay when they went south. They need places to eat. These places were the targets of bombings. Some of these places were listed in the green book, including the Lorraine Motel<\/a> which is a place where Martin Luther<\/a> king was assassinated. Now, consider how important it would be to have an automobile if your job was to travel around an entire county and register voters. If you had to travel and entire county or if you had to travel and entire state and register voters. This is called the jenkins microbus, and its a pretty marvelous bus. Apparently part of it is is not the African American<\/a> museum, a recently acquired addition. This bus was used to travel all over the state of alabama to register voters, but also is used as the school to train voters in literacy so they could pass the literacy test. And it was a haven for children and was used as a meeting space. So it was so important to be able to have mobility when you were trying to register voters and bring people into the Civil Rights Movement<\/a>. But the bus boycott is perhaps the most significant use of the automobile, and the robust boycotts all over the south. Here you see Martin Luther<\/a> king helping some women into a car so that they can get to work. In order for them to bankrupt, really bankrupt the montgomery bus system, it was important for them to be able, for people to continue to go to work and to move about the city. The way they were able to move about the city was through the purchase of a fleet of automobiles. So Martin Luther<\/a> king and the bus boycott purchased automobiles, and people already had cars helped people drive to work so that 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<\/a>. It was also key when people needed to get from the airport to their hotel. This cab caps were segregated and black cabs were not allowed to pick up people at hotel. People planted various cities for protests would rent a car and that would be there with getting to their hotel. So how does the story end . In 1964 lbj tapped major legislation that extend Voting Rights<\/a> and outlaw segregation and immediately all public accommodations are opened to africanamericans. So the major chain hotel, the sheridan, howard johnson, the hilton are open to africanamericans. And 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 Philando Castile<\/a> who was murdered in his automobile by Minnesota Police<\/a> officer in 2016, and officer was acquitted of manslaughter. Because he was simply come he said he was afraid of Philando Castile<\/a>, simply because of the color of his skin. This is a cartoon by Stuart Carlson<\/a> who was a former editorial cartoonist for the milwaukee journal sentinel. And its funny but its 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 and the automobile . The green book goes out of business and the black hotels, the irony is the block hotels gradually lose their clientele. And the large chain Hotel Florist<\/a> but 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 questions please raise your hand. We will get a microphone you. Please ask your question in the form of the question. Was that little girl can you hear me . [inaudible] [laughing] my father was a photographer, and it was a piece of film that i found and that gave all of my old home movies to rick, and he printed them digitally and that was one of the pieces of film. How did you go about doing your research . Im an exhibition curator primarily, and i was doing an expedition in Saratoga Springs<\/a>, new york, and a colleague of mine would written a book about leisure in Saratoga Springs<\/a> asked me if i have heard of the green book. It was about 20 years ago, and id never heard of it at that point and i was intrigued. One of my graduate student who was in chicago, i found the headline at the university of chicago, and one of my graduate students copy did for me and that was my first green book. And i started with the green book, but as a got into the research i realized the story is much broader than the green book. Its really about the automobile and the way the automobile changed africanamerican life. And so the story kind of expanded from there. You said the green book was at castration for free, is that right . Some of them were given away for free and others were sold for one dollar. How did they make money . Green sold them and he sold them out of his harlem office, and in some places they were sold, but standard oil purchased them. Standard oil had a contract with green to buy thousands of copies. Was in effort to put blacks along the road in front of the places where they went to say that this was the green book stations that people went to . The National Trust<\/a> for Historic Preservation<\/a> has been trying to put out markers at some of the sites. A large number of the sites are no longer because they were urban renewed. In the late 60s when urban renewal went through cities, they often just bulldozed entire black neighborhoods, and many of those places are gone. If you look even at my capital city of albany, the large part of a black neighborhood was just completely wiped out by urban renewal. So yes, there are some markers that will be going up at the store green book sites, and they are working on that. I want to thank you for writing that book. Thank you. I want to know if many of the things that you collected will be part of a permanent exhibit someplace . Thats a good question. I think that the movie, the film is going to premiere in detroit, motor city, and Detroit Historical<\/a> society is going to be doing an exhibition on im not sure if its going to be on automobiles, on travel, on the green book. Do you know of a jewish green book . So the research that it did, actually had a jewish the story helped me on that because i couldnt find anything, and theres a small volume called the daily kashrut, and it was a publication that basically told you how to observe the dietary laws and what you can eat. You could have this or her shes chocolate, certain things that were kosher. And in the back of that there was a listing of places to stay, and that we decided was probably the guide before the guy that you and i were talking about that came up in the late 50s or early 60s. I bought a modern copy of the green book thinking we could travel south and maybe learn something more. But the modern one, the reprint, is only of what the states have now and not really where you could go and learn something. More of what the states laws are in terms of racial equality rather than what it was in the past. I was looking more of something for the past. You can actually buy reprints of the original green books, but theyre also on the new Public Library<\/a> website. If you just type in new york Public Library<\/a> green book they will all pop up. The holiday inns were specific event as places that would not be segregated that would be all over the country, is that right . I dont know the answer to that. But wouldnt that be lovely . That was an increasing number, as a get into late 60s, there was an increasing number of people who were looking for integrated accommodations. I dont know the specific issue about holiday inn. Ill look it up though but buto know there was an increasing interest in integrated accommodations and some liberal americans, white americans were sticking those places that were integrated. What was the deal that allowed him to sell the books or give specific rates to the green book . There were two men that were hired by standard oil to market to the black community, and both of them found that when they were traveling for Company Business<\/a> they had to use the green book. That led to a relationship between standard oil and the green book. Is there now among africanamericans to be shopping at exxon . I dont think so. I think its probably forgotten. Okay. [inaudible] [laughing] i think we can all please join me in thanking gretchin sorin. [applause] weeknights this month were featuring booktv programs showcasing whats available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight well feature bestsellers. Watch booktv this week and every weekend here on cspan2. Next, journalist David Zucchino<\/a> on his book wilmingtons lie covering the 1898 right in wilmington, north carolina, where White Supremacists<\/a> killed 60 like me and displaced hundreds of africanamerican families. This is an hour. Good evening. Welcome to quail ridge books. It is my honor to introduce to you jim","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia802909.us.archive.org\/9\/items\/CSPAN2_20200409_114100_Gretchen_Sorin_Driving_While_Black\/CSPAN2_20200409_114100_Gretchen_Sorin_Driving_While_Black.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20200409_114100_Gretchen_Sorin_Driving_While_Black_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240716T12:35:10+00:00"}