this wasn't a history that you could find. ♪ >> betty at first was surprised there was such a thing as a black marine. >> you don't believe it, ask a tuskegee airman. he'll tell you. >> victor green was a mailman for 40 years, lived in harlem, lived right across the street from duke ellington. victor green was a man with a seventh grade education yet he put together a publication that touched all aspects of life. >> my parents liked to travel. they figured that was helpful for our education. the thing was, finding the black section of town and you used the green book to find places to eat so i always knew that we couldn't stay places. ♪ >> mr. green was distinguished and even as a child, a very lovely man, and i would say it was unusual to have a black client working with a white printer. >> the green book, my dad found what was the first place that he could stay between new orleans and the end of the drive for that first day. and the next day we drove all the way to miami and we stayed at the lord calvert hotel which was listed in the green book also. ♪ >> esso station had these books in a rack outside the pump and so i picked up one and found crosby's hotel in pensacola, florida. >> my parents owned the first fully accredited african-american owned travel agency in the united states. they were able to convince people over time and it took many groups and eventually ended up taking thousands of people abroad. >> he described the fighting and the dogs being sicced on them and people who had died to fight for the right for us to stay anywhere. >> so it's now my absolute pleasure to introduce tonight's special guest. calvin ramsey is an author, photographer and playwright whose works have been shown all around the country. with the objective of shedding light on the overlooked and sometimes missing pages of african manner history, ramsey's plays stimulate, educate and bring the audience closer to truth in american history. his first play, "the green book" had its premiere at atlanta's theatrical outfit. it won recognition as a finalist in the twelfth annual last frontier theater conference held in valdez, alaska, where it was positively critiqued by prominent playwrights, actors and directors including edward albee and patricia neal. this success was followed by other critically acclaimed looks, including ramsey's exploration of the complex career of the gifted african-american actor and civil rights activist. he has also served on the advisory board of special collections at emory university's woodruff library in atlanta and he is a proud recipient of the dr. martin luther king jr. drum major for justice award. please help me in welcoming calvin ramsey to the stage. [ applause ] >> well, good afternoon. glad to see you're all out tonight. i'm a new person, new transplant here in new york city. i have been here two and a half years and live right across yankee stadium. i really love being in new york. part of my reason for coming to new york was because of victor green. victor hugo green, the mailman who started the green book. how many of you have relatives, grandparents that were born in another country? okay. well, you kind of have a migration story as well. in the african-american community we had over six million people from 1915 to 1970 that sort of got on the road to look for a better life for themselves and their families and they called it the great migration. jacob lawrence did a whole 60-panel exhibit on this that was here last summer at moma and i had the good fortune of being able to go in there and film all 60 panels. but what the green back was about, is about, is about traveling with dignity, being on the road, being able to stop, eat, use the restroom and just feel safe without humiliation, without threats of violence or even death, and victor green, who had a seventh grade education, lived in harlem, but he worked in hackensack, new jersey as a letter carrier. he started working in 1913. in 1918, he got married to a woman from richmond, virginia named elma duke and they moved back to harlem. 938 st. nicholas avenue. 20 years later he started the green book. he would take her home during the summer to visit her family in virginia and that's when he ran into difficulties on the open road. victor green had a jewish friend who told him about their troubles traveling and said they have their own travel book. so victor green got the idea from his friend and he started this green book. but he couldn't do it alone. he had very little resources. he was a full-time letter carrier but what he had was an army of letter carriers all over the united states, mostly men then. there were some women but mostly african-american men. these were the guys that would go out and get addresses and places of business, places where people could just frequent while they were on the open road. they sent those things in to him and that's how the green book actually started. from that point on, it just grew and grew. the first year he did the green book it was just for new york. just like other parts of the country, there was jim crow in new york as well. after new york, he was able to expand it to other parts of the country. and he kept the book going from 1936 to 1964 and his dream was one day to go out of business. he wanted to have it so that african mes african-americans would have accommodations on the open road. that was his dream. he didn't live to see that. he died in 1960. his wife kept it going for four more years. he retired from the postal service in 1952. then he worked on the green book full-time. but when he started on the green back -- when he started in the postal service in 1913, he was able to join a union, the national association of letter carriers which was a white union, which is a -- well, it's a union now still, but back then it was predominantly white. somehow or other he got into this union in hackensack and from that, he still couldn't use his members to get him information, and that same year, 1913, a group of african-american men in lookout mountain, tennessee, mostly railway mail clerks, one of the men was john wesley dobbs. he was a mason. he was also the grandfather of the first mayor of atlanta. so in 1913, this union started and victor green and this union become partners. this is his male force. these were his pied pipers. just like today, the mail carrier in your neighborhood knows more about you than probably anybody else in your neighborhood. he knows who's in trouble and who might be getting in trouble and all of that. so these guys and mostly guys then, knew that. they knew what to ask and not to ask. the african-american women played a major role in this because back then most of the men were working and they were homemakers. the women were a lot of times at home working and the mailmen would ask them, would they mind being in this book. if you look in the green book, you will see that the address was always mrs. so and so. it was never mr. lewis or mr. brown or mr. white or anything like that. it was always mrs. because the women took this on themselves to make sure that these listings were listed. they were called tourist homes. most of these small towns did not have negro motels. some of the negro motels just weren't suitable for families. they really were for railroad workers, traveling salesmen and just single guys on the road. they just weren't suitable for families to stay there, a lot of them. but these tourist homes were just regular homes. there were no phone numbers in the green book. you would just pull up, knock on the door and say we're traveling, need a place to stay. some folks would charge a little bit, some folks wouldn't charge anything. most people would leave some money under the pillow or on the dresser to show their gratitude. this went on and on. then later on, victor green had the good fortune of coming in contact with a gentleman named billboard jackson, who was an educated black man who had worked in the commerce department under hoover, and he was also pro-business. he was all about black business. this guy was really a mover and a shaker. i talked to wynton marsalis' father ellis a few years ago in new orleans. his father had a ten-room motel, a service station and a taxicab stand. he wasn't a musician. the music part of the family comes from the mother's side. the father was a business guy. he had an esso service station called billboard esso. he thought so much of billboard jackson he named his esso station after billboard. billboard went out and got black men trained to run these stations all over the united states and these stations advertised in the green book. so a lot of folks would ask why would rockefeller, because esso is owned by standard oil, owned by john d. rockefeller senior, and the question was why would john d. rockefeller get involved with a program like this, was he trying just to corner the black market in travel, or did he have other reasons? most people point to rockefeller's wife. her name was laura. she was from massachusetts originally but they had migrated to ohio. her father was a congregational minister. their home was part of the underground railroad. there were reports that troops stayed there many a nights talking to the children, spending the night. the family's last name was spelman. i guess some of you heard of the school in atlanta? okay. well, the school is named after rockefeller's wife's family. if you go on that campus you will see a painting or photograph of the minister, minister spelman and his wife, and the church on campus is called sister chapel and i always thought it was called sister chapel because of all the sisters that were on campus. but it's called sister chapel because of laura and lucy spelman. once they got involved with the green book and the advertising and billboard jackson, 95% of the businesses in the green book were black-owned businesses that supported the green book and supported the travelers on the open road. i think we have another clip we are going to show of some of my interviews from the film. >> where you from? >> i'm from new york city, from manhattan, actually. my parents lived in harlem when i was born. when i was 1, i moved to queens and i grew up in queens. >> and your parents met -- >> yeah, my parents met in pratt, kansas, where my mother lived and my mother grew up. during world war ii, my father was stationed there. that's when they met. my father went back to, you know, was sent to europe, to france, i think he was fighting, and when the war was over, they got married and moved to new york. >> that's where you and your -- >> right. that's where i was born. >> you mentioned it was woman's hospital? >> woman's hospital which is no longer there, which was near columbia, where columbia university is now. like 116th and broadway. that area. >> your family would go back south for holidays or summer vacations or weddings and funerals, things like that? >> yeah. we would go south two or three times a year. we would go for thanksgiving, holidays, mainly. thanksgiving, the summer, christmas and we would visit my mother's family in kansas as well. we had to drive. this is before interstate highways as well. >> lot of two-lane blacktop highways. >> exactly. had to go through the mountains in west virginia. >> how about food? your mother would spend a lot of time cooking? >> we would take the shoebox with the fried chicken. what would she make? potato salad goes bad really quick so you have to eat that first. yeah. she definitely cooked. >> potato pies? potato pie? >> my mom wasn't a great cook, actually. on the way back, my grandmother would pack us up. we wouldn't get from salsbury to greensboro we would be in the pies eating them. >> okay. wow. so you remember -- when did you first become aware that accommodations on the road were not open to your family? >> i feel like i always knew it. my father used to take me, sometimes he would take me before my sister was born, my sister's three years younger than me, so i always knew that we couldn't stay places or we couldn't eat places. i don't remember -- i guess my mother packing the lunch. it was just -- and i traveled from the time i was like 2, i can remember from 2 on. >> and so the bathroom stops were really -- >> yeah, this is what you say, say yes, ma'am. you can't go in the bathroom, you can't, you know, don't do anything accidentally. so i was prepped. once we get past d.c. the rules changed. >> you remember your father using the green book? >> i do remember him using the green book to find places to eat. the thing was find the black section of town and use the green book to find places to eat, and at other times when we traveled beyond, you know, my parents liked to travel so they figured that was helpful for our education, so at one point we took a trip from new york across country, like through the grand canyon to california and then down to mexico to acapulco. we went that far. >> wow. that's a real trip. >> we actually started out, we went all the way to florida. that's when i remember him using the book, to find places to stay. actually, that was the year they passed the civil rights act. >> 1964. >> right. they must have -- i think they passed that in july. yeah. and remember staying in those boarding rooming houses and at one place we stayed in florida, the owner begged my father to go stay in a hotel, a regular hotel, because they had -- he described the fighting and the dogs being sicc'ed on them and people who had died to fight for the right for us to stay anywhere. it's really -- that whole trip was like a trip. we were the first blacks to go in those white hotels so it was, in texas we did that. i mean, people got up and left, the whole dining room went quiet. it's an emotional thing, that whole traveling thing with them. >> especially for a young child. >> yeah. >> so when the man would plead with your father to go stay at one of these hotels, your father sort of resisted. >> right. my father was resentful of the fact that he couldn't stay in those hotels before and he was adamant that he was going to continue to support african-american, at that time negro establishment. he was like i'm not staying. they didn't want me then, i'm not going to go stay there now. i'm not going to eat in their establishments, i'm not going to stay in their establishments. i'm not going to patronnize themg them in any way. after the guy sat him down and told him the specific sacrifices that he had made, he was an older gentleman, and he said you know, i need your business but i'm begging you, you have the money, please go do it. my father did it and the rest of the trip we stayed in regular hotels. >> wow. that is emotional. and you remember the first time you went into a regular hotel/motel and checking in? you were small. >> i was small. we had gone to mexico and our experience in mexico was way different. we were welcomed. as a matter of fact, my father was a chatty guy and he ran into this man who let us stay in his penthouse in acapulco. we come back, great experience in mexico, wonderful time. as a matter of fact, the mexicans were talking about the americans, european americans and how they just get drunk, bad manners they had and they were like the gringos. we come across the border in texas, this i remember really clearly, we come across the border in texas, we stop in a hotel, we go into the dining room. we walked -- my mother had, you know, bows and had us really dressed up, looking our absolute best. we step into the dining room and silence. it was a big room. silence. everybody stopped talking, everybody turned and looked at us. it was terrifying. >> yeah. >> and i mean, not smiling. scowling. so some people got up and walked out of the dining room and we walked in, my parents, we sat down, they ordered the food and we ate. but it was not a fun memory. it was real scary to me. and very uncomfortable. >> yeah. you mentioned one time you was driving in north carolina and the sheriff's car passed you by, and turned around. >> yes. i remember another incident where we were going to visit my father's family in north carolina. my grandmother, his uncle, before the interstate highways. there were two lane blacktop highways as you described them and we were -- it was at night. we were driving down the highway because it would take longer than it takes now to get there because you had to go through the mountains in west virginia. anyway we were driving down the highway, the sheriff is coming towards us in the opposite direction. as we drive past, he makes a swift u-turn. my father had a new buick, new york license plate and he was very conscious of the new york plates and in these small towns they know everybody in the town. when you come in the city limits, they know you're there. so anyway, they made a quick u-turn. he gunned the motor to outrun them because we were afraid that if they stopped us they would kill him or harm us in some way. so we were in the car back crying. my mother was like hysterical that he's going to outrun these police which he did. he drove really fast, he cut off his lights and then took a side road really quickly. i guess we went around a curve, he took a side road and drove off that road down, you know, and we sat under a tree until the sun came up like hiding. >> wow. >> we saw -- he saw their lights go past back and forth. they couldn't figure out where he was. >> wow. >> it was really frightening. >> what year you think this was? >> wow. what year was that. i was really young. >> '50s? >> yeah, definitely in the '50s. yeah. in the '50s. yeah. i must have been -- my sister was born, maybe she was 3, 4. i was maybe 7. >> yeah. >> yeah. i'm 66, so that was awhile ago. >> so stayed after daybreak. did you go to sleep there? >> sleep? no way. >> afraid to go to sleep. >> afraid. >> wow. wow. wow. then you just got back on the road? >> he creeped out. you know, after many hours that their lights, you know, stopped going back and forth, we creeped out. my mother was really upset. >> yeah. but your father kept traveling after that, years in the future? he never stopped traveling? >> no, he didn't. >> he was a brave guy. >> yeah, he was. >> you were brave, too. you could have said dad, i don't want to go? you never said that? >> no. never said that. >> but you definitely remember -- >> he felt like he was a person with some -- of some stature with some rights. we had to manage but. >> he was a citizen. >> yeah. he was a citizen. exactly. the system was wrong, not him. >> exactly. wow. what was your father's name? >> richard. >> what was your mother's name? >> betty. she's alive. my mother's 90 something years old. >> she doesn't live here, though? >> no, she's in florida. they retired and moved to florida. she doesn't live here. >> it's a beautiful story. i think that's it. what did you think? >> that was amazing. >> i know. >> well, that's paula. i didn't know paula. i was up in harlem. that was right across from the polo grounds on edgecomb avenue. any of you familiar with edgecomb in the sugar hill section? i was at the interview with a gentleman who was in the military who used green book traveling across the country and paula was just sitting on the bench, just sitting there, and she asked what we were doing. and becky mentioned we were filming some people about the green book and she said well, my parents had a green book. so that's how we got paula. we had no idea that she had all these stories. she has more stories than this. we have another clip of her that is very dramatic. i hope we get a chance to show it. so how many of you have a green book, heard of the green book or family members once owned a green book or have you heard of the green book before now? okay. i went to an auction last april at the swan gallery and a green book sold for $22,500. now it's a rare book. this was about the size of a jet magazine, 6 x 9. it fit inside the glove compartment of the car. once you got a copy you kept it forever. some people would make copies of copies, just like i guess they would do now, duplicating tapes and cds and whatnot. victor green didn't mind that at all. he printed about maybe 15 to 20 or 25,000 books every year. and because he, like i said earlier, he was a full-time mail carrier and he had to go to hackensack every day. then he would come back. once he got advertising, he was able to move his operation out of his home and he moved into his office into 200 west 135th street right above small's paradise. he was above the famous music establishment and he was there for many years, and down the hall from him was this postal union that started in lookout mountain, tennessee. they were in room 208. he was in room 215a. so that was his energy, that was his field force, and they really kept the book going. even after civil rights bills were passed, people still wanted to stay where they felt comfortable. because there was push-back, you know, in the beginning. people just didn't automatically open the doors and businesses. it was some push-back. but victor green was a guy that felt like something needed to be done. he did it very quietly. and when he passed away, he kind of like just fell through the cracks of history. i had never heard of the green book. even though i'm old enough to remember the green book, the period of jim crow. i remember seeing the water fountains and the signs and things of that nature. i was in atlanta talking to a second grade class and i mentioned i was old enough to remember that, and a little girl asked me had i ever seen a dinosaur. so i told her i'm not quite that old. but you know, but the books are there so it's kind of fell through history. i had never heard of the green book so i'm going to go back a little ways, back in the '70s, i moved to california. i was going to be a writer, going to write screenplays and do all that so i was taking some courses at ucla. out there for a couple years. nothing was working. it just wasn't working out. i was having a lot of fun but nothing was really working out, so my parents said just come on back. i said well, all right. but i didn't go back to north carolina which is where i grew up. born in baltimore, grew up in north carolina. so i flew to st. croix, lived there for a couple years, then i lived in st. john and virgin islands and then i came back, i went back south and got married. but when i was in california, i met some people. i met a black guy named jonathan and his best friend named tony and jonathan's sister named patricia. so you fast forward almost 30 years, i'm at home depot to buy a lawn mower for my youngest son, so he can start cutting the grass, and so this guy walks up behind me and he says you look like calvin ramsey. i turned around and it's tony, one of the guys from l.a. he said come on by the house, i married patricia and we have eight children. i go by the house, i'm uncle calvin, the oldest child is little tony and so but a year later, little tony gets killed. he gets killed in a car accident. he was driving and he had a flat tire and he stopped on the side of the road and the police stopped to help him and someone runs over to the police officeres and tony. the police officers get their legs broken and little tony gets killed. i'm at the funeral in the backyard and the grandfather comes down from new york, patricia's father and little tony's grandfather comes down from new york. first time in the deep south. this is 2001. we're all in the backyard. he looks right at me and says i was looking for a green book. he thought he still needed one in 2001, his first time in the deep south. i said what's a green book? he starts explaining what the green book was and all that. i hadn't heard of it. i went to the university and they didn't have any copies of the green book. they knew what i was talking about. went to morehouse, they had two copies of the green book. i made copies of copies and so that's how the green book fell on me. so i wrote a play, then i did a children's book. i think the lady here has my children's book. can you hold it up? in the dedication page of the children's book, i dedicated the book to little tony, the young man who was killed. i just want to hold it up. this is the book here. this is the story of an 8-year-old little girl named ruth and it's 1953 and she travels from chicago to selma to see her grandmother. on the dedication page i dedicated the book to little tony. so this tells what she goes through on this trip. she knows nothing about her color being an issue until they make the first stop and the parents have to give her that talk. if you were a certain age and you were a black person, you may remember that conversation or that talk, your parents or grandparents gave you about how things are. so ruth gets this talk on this trip and her whole life changes and but she grows from this. and she grows from this and so when i talk to kids, you know, they see it as a fairness issue. ruth is not being treated fairly. that's how it affects them. it's just not a fair thing. then we talk about other forms of discrimination, not just color. we talk about sexual identity, we talk about religion, we talk about body shapes, we talk about learning ability, physical ability, because discrimination is not just color. it's other things as well. that's what we talk about with the kids, using the book. so i think we have another little clip on paula that i would like for you to see. i think it's pretty dramatic. i think you might get something out of it. >> yeah. yeah. so i have more story, actually, because traveling to kansas took several days and it was grueling because you couldn't really stop anywhere except the rooming houses. so i remember from the green book, but i remember one occasion where i got sick, i got a high temperature like 103, 104, and my parents were trying to -- and i remember they had the book with this story. they were trying to find a place to stay and i think we were way -- we were really like two or three hours from the nearest place. we had to go all the way back to st. louis or something where we could stay and i was really sick. so my father went to motels that really looked kind of seedy-ish sort of, no cars in the parking lot, and begged if we could drive around the back and just stay in the hotel for the night because i was sick. and the nearest hospital was -- and i think this book might have had that in it, too, like hospitals, you could go to. because i remember them consulting this and trying to figure out what they were going to do. should we do this or should we do that. to do, should we do this or that. you know, i think they decided we were better off just trying to, you know, keep going in the direction we were going. so -- >> no motel -- >> no. so my father goes in to beg and the guy says we can't. he said, there's nobody here. they wouldn't know. he said, if they find out i'll never -- >> have customers again. >> he did that to two or three, i don't remember how many. but to a numb were of hotels. fier finally he went in crying, my daughter is sick. >> that didn't work either? >> no. >> my parents drove straight through with my sick, alternating with my mother driving and my father driving. i remember it because of my father crying, begging with me in his arms, please, you see my daughter is sick. please. >> wow. back to st. louis or back to the nearest town. >> well, they went -- no, they went straight through to pratt , kansas. they drove straight through. >> that's incredible. my sister wasn't borng. i was 2. i remember that. >> that's a great story. >> that made an impression. >> they're good filmmakers. >> even though they had this book, these places weren't -- when you get st. louis at that far, places were not that close together. >> exactly. and he got information to put in his book from mailmen. he was a man man himself. >> zblok aokay. >> and he lived around the corner. >> get out of here. >> his office was at 200 west 35th street where the smalls paradise was located and where the i hop is. >> okay. >> that's where his office was located. he lived there, office there, worked in hackensack as a mailman for 40 years and he retired. >> everybody used this book. >> the green book? >> yeah, everybody used it. [ inaudible ] >> so it kind of gives you a little different flavor of what the trips were like on the open road as far as children traveling with their parents. it wasn't always pleasant, wasn't always comfortable. and there were also an area of some of these cities and counties called sundown towns where you weren't supposed to be there after sundown. and so victor green made it clear that, you know, avoid those at all risks because you could just -- i think that's what paula ran into the night her father outran the local sheriffs. they were in a sundown town. you got caught after sundown, you're in all kind of violations of their county and their state. i'd like for you ask me some questions now, if you have some. yes, sir. >> hi. what do you say today to the so-called african american about economics and where they spend their dollar? thank you. >> well, you know, one of the, i guess, the bad things about the movement was that, you know, at one time there were a lot of businesses. the green book was 95% african american, you know, owned control businesses that were in the green book that provided a service. and after integration, you know, those businesses no longer existed because the customers went elsewhere. i was watching a documentary last night on the negro baseball. and buck o'neal, one of the managers of the kansas city man arks, talking about how great negro baseball is. each though they were glad that jackie robinson got in. after he got it, they used to draw 30,000 a game and it got down to just a couple thousand after that. the league didn't exist after that. but buck e kneel thought it was needed and there was an opportunity. folks fought for it. it was all about inclusion. so he felt like it was still a good thing. >> it's a two-part question. did the families and businesses who listed in this book feel like they were in any kind of danger for being in this book? like were there other people in the towns where their homes or businesses were that would persecute them for list in this book? and do you know of any, any of those kinds of circumstances that occurred? >> no. well, the green book was unlike the underground railroad. it was kind out out in the open and kind of like keeping things separate and equal. so it was really -- yeah. it was in sync with the law of the land. this is what people wanted. they wanted people not to come to their places. people weren't in any kind of harm's way by being in the green book. the letter carriers, i think, extended themselves because it wasn't part of their job description to get people to do something like this. so i think they were in the most difficult position. yes. >> just have a quick question i wanted to ask. how did people get their copies of the green book? did the letter carriers mail them or how were they able to get their copies? >> before so got involved, they were selling them at the racks at the gas station. a lot of these guys were masons, prince hall masons. and the port men had them on the trains and the urban league has a sbrix center and the eastern stars. so it was getting out there. they were getting out there. >> thank you for your research, mr. ramsey. i kind of have three questions but i'll make them real quick. was is was there information about mexico? and two, was there information about sundown towns? and what cities or regions sold the most green books, i guess? >> well, the northeast had most of the listings. and what happened after world war ii is that a lot of the american soldiers were studying abroad, living different places, the white soldiers. some places where they really didn't have a lot of jim crow issues, the americans were importing jim crow to new regions, like to the caribbean, parts of canada, to paris. and so it got to a point where victor green had to list places, some of these places that ordinarily or beforehand it wasn't an issue is. but after the american g.i. started going these places, we don't associate with these people back home. we don't want to do it here. i've talked to folks from jamaica who said at one time they could go in the front door of the hotels. it got to a point where the larger hotels would ask them not to do that. this was something imported. victor green opened up the caribbean, started doing things in bermuda. and then he had his own little travel guide as well. you know, tourism and bus excursions. he really expanded on the green book. uh-huh. i want to know how -- where we can see your entire film. and i also wanted to know how did you find people to interview for your film. >> okay. well hopefully the film will be ready by early april. and you know, finding people, it was -- i used to live in atlanta. i was down there for a long time and i had a play that was running down there. and after the play, you know, i'd be at a live event signing the children's books and people would walk up and tell me things about their own experiences, about whether they had a green book or not. i did a play in d.c., a reading of the play, not a full production, just a stage reading. and julian bond played mr. green. so he kaukd about his father having a green book. and then after we did a talk back after the play was ove over,erover, ernie green said his family had a green book. so it just kind of comes up, you know, like paula. i didn't know paula at all, you know. so, you know, even if they did not have a green book, they still had travel stories. so all of the stories don't have to be a green bookstorery. but i want to have the travel stories in a documentary as well. but usually word of mouth. then i met the green family who live here in harlem. one lady, ramona green, she remembered victor. they came to his wedding. they heard about me doing the children's book and they were glad about it. but they went about their separate lives and left it alone. now they're getting a little more excited about what victor, you know, achieved, being part of their family. i think -- okay. back here. good evening. i'm a doctoral student at st. john's university and i'm curious to find out what the institutions of higher education played in expousing the blacks from the north as they traveled throughout the south. >> my father-in-law was a doctor in may con, georgia. he was from chicago originally. but when nay would travel, him and his wife, they would stay at black colleges, the tomorrow to -- dorm toris. they were open. especially in the summer when the students weren't there. they served as hotels for a lot of black people traveling, especially if you knew about it, if you were connected to the schools in any way or had friends there. but the schools were just really an oasis for travelers. i know a couple in atlanta, this gentleman was a jewish gentleman but he had gone to -- he taught -- he had gone to harvard but he was teaching down at fitz for many years. when he heard about the green book he was taken aback. he taught for many, many years and they had all of these conferences and meetings and folks would come in, but no one talked about how they got there and the problems they ran into. and he felt a little hurt that no one confided in him about what the travel situation was. even today i talk to people and they said i never thought about that. how do black people get from here to there during the jim crow years. how did that work. when they think about it, they say, that's pretty amazing and it also is pretty sad. i talked to one person from georgia tech. his family was out of ohio. he was going to california. a little boy, 12 years of age. and his father was dead tired, just dead tired. he went to a black hotel and he wanted to spend the night there and the black proprietor told him, i'm sorry, you can't stay here. it's against the law. and this was a little white kid. the family was white but the black guy, he was following the same rules saying hey, i can't let you stay here either. and the little boy, he just never forgot that. he was telling me the story. this guy is a professor at georgia tech. he started crying. i get a lot of that. some people say they wish i hadn't even brought the subject up. the great bass player, ray brown who was married to ella fitzgerald at one time said if he ever gets alzheimer's he hope he'll get the kind that will erase all of the travel problems that he had on the road. if he can get that kind, he'll be glad to have it. >> hi, thanks. as an aside, when jackie robinson was hired by the dodgers, they did their spring training in cuba because they were afraid of the racist problem here. that's amazing. my question is i heard that catholics used to have a lot of trouble in the south. so did they also, like if a priest was traveling from here to there, did they also use the green book? >> you mean white catholics or black catholics? [ laughter ] just catholics period? well, i don't know. i think the color kind of trumped everything. your color, no matter what you were, if you was black, you was just in trouble. at one school a little indian kid asked me, he said, well fi was traveling just what would i be. would they allow me to stay there. i said, you know, probably not. you know. he was kind of concerned about that. but it was, it was, you know, it was there. if you're a certain age when you're traveling, i mean even now if i'm driving, i'm on the interstate and i see a place that's not a name brand rest area, i don't really pull in. if it's just a little independent spot, i keep on going until i find something that look a little more appealing. it's kind of ingrained in you. it's a memory, you really can't get rid of it. okay. >> i was a little late so i apologize if you already stayed this. but was there one book nationally or were there regional ones? and how often would mr. green update them? >> it was yearly. and it was done by states and cities in the state. alphabetical order. you know, utah, you name it, if it was a state, you know, he had a listing. he had a letter carrier in there somewhere. and these mailmen, you know, were really good about sending him information. and he got it and got it out, you know, way before the internet and you know all of this other stuff. he was producing this publication. i think she has a question here. and then there's some more the back, i think. >> when you started out tonight wu asked usyw if we had immigra, immigrants in our family. and you reminded me that when my great-great grandparents came from germany, they came and were given guidelines on how to behave. were any things like that in the book as well? >> yes. victor green, like when paula mentioned her family were the first one to maybe eat in some of these restaurants. so you know, they wanted to make sure, i guess, you know, they had the proper table etiquette, manners and things of that nature. that was mostly what they called home training back in my time. you call that home training. but back in the day the first ones that integrated these places in the black community was the educated class. it was the ones who had gone to college and who were professional people. they were the first ones that went in, you know, these places. you hear stories all the time that sometimes the restaurants would ask for a black professional family to come in, you know, from the community. they wanted that person to be -- that group to be the first so thatp a it could set off a good example, things of that? ! nat. when i talk to kids in schools, i talk about, you know, their family history, if their families were from maybe ireland, they settled in hell's kitchen, they were from caribbean, maybe in harlem or brooklyn, if they were italian, maybe the bronx, lower east side, jewish. that was their kind of green book. usually the first ones that settled sent back for others so they have a place to stay, a place to worship, a place to work, a place to get medical service. that's what the southern blacks did by coming north and going west. the caribbean blacks that i've spoken with, mostly ones from jamaica and other places, they got here by they families, working on the panama canal. and from the panama canal they had entry into the united states and that was their own green book migration story. we've all got some kind of story. no matter where we're from, we're here and maybe our children or grandchildren are somewhere else. the migration continues. it never ends. but usually there was, you know, some kind of map, some kind of -- green book really was a map to get you there. once you get there you had to have another map. a family connection. african americans who were traveling a lot. they were going back and forth. some came north and got good jobs in the factories and unions and things of that nature. they would go back for weddings and funerals and things of that nature. they would talk to the ones that stayed. some blacks stayed in these areas. so it was a -- it was a lot of movement. just a lot of movement. was there another -- okay. thank you, mr. samry for being here tonight and for keeping this whole story alive. i just wanted to share, i first found out about the green book very recently because the new york public library has scanned it and put it online so you can look at the labs and flip through a number of different green books. >> okay. thank you. i think we're going to show some -- i think we're going to show some brooklyn listings in the green book. was there another question over here? okay. guy with a beard. okay. [ inaudible ] >> excuse me, sir. you need to use the microphone. >> the year the dodgers trained in havana, they stayed at the hotel national. the montreal royals were the farm team that had the black players. they stayed elsewhere but the four black players were segregated and stayed in a boarding house in downtown havana. so the jim crow laws were brought by the americans into cuba. >> yeah, yeah, exactly. and i think some of the, some of the caribbean players were not quite accustomed to that. i think louis tian ran into that as well. i met a sports writer a few years ago that writes here in new york, his family is from jacksonville, florida. and every year -- this is before the yankees moved further south in florida. they have spring training in jacksonville. and every year he had to give his room up to the catcher of the yankees. he asked me to write a children's back about that, you know. so i reached out to his wife and daughter and they kind of wanted to do it themselves, you know. but i said, okay. but every year can you imagine that, coming to your home and staying in your home. that's pretty incredible, you know. and it gave him a yankees uniform and he had a picture of it and all that stuff. that was a bad thing, was a good thing too. someone else had their -- >> couple things. one, you mentioned the sundown towns. there's a book i read earlier this year called sundown towns that was very interesting pabt it was a lot of the communities were in the north, they weren't down in the south, ohio, pennsylvania, and even southern california, los angeles. they were maybe known as restricted covenants. but they were still considered sundown towns. so it wasn't only in the south that these towns -- what he shows through his research is even into the 1980s there were several areas that would not allow people of color, people who were jewish et cetera into certain communities. along those lines, i grew up in bergen beech in the '60s and '70s. we did not see one black face on the beach at that time unless they were walking with their bag to clean a house during the day. that's how i grew up. five, six miles down the road in brooklyn it was very restrictive. nobody was allowed in there if you weren't white. and so -- and it was noticed, you know, being a little white kid in new york. when i came into the city or went to other parts, downtown brooklyn, you saw other people. and i asked my mother, why is it so different where we are. she said, it's just the way it is. we're not talking very long ago up here in the north, in brooklyn, new york. >> martha's vineyard, they got a section in oak bluffs, a section of the beach called the ink well and that's where all of the blacks go, especially during the jim crow years. this was in massachusetts, on the vineyard. and now blacks can go all over the island if they want to the different beaches. but they still go there because they said it was good enough for my grandparents and elders, this is home. so you might go there and see anybody out there. you know, spike lee or dick gregory. this is their turf. some of the older folks don't like that name, the ink well. but this is where you'll find the people. was there someone else? okay. >> hi. i was wondering if this book was mostly used for people who were looking to travel or for people in their own cities. >> it was for travelers because people in their own city, they knew the nightclubs, they knew the restaurants, the cleaners, the barber shops and all of that stuff. but the traveller didn't know anything about this, you know, the family that was traveling by car. and you know, the buses back then, you know, even though the supreme court had favorable rulings, it was all these state rights issues where the states made their own laws, made their own rules. and so you really couldn't do very much. and people didn't like riding the bus that much because of the sitting in the back and then you get to the depot, the bus depo where you had to eat and use the bathroom. so once blacks became more fluent and mobile and started buying their cars and wanted to have ownership or feel like they're in charge, they started driving. and that presented a whole other set of problems. and i think that's what victor green was trying to eliminate, the humiliation and uncertainty. but to plan a trip, you know, with kids in the car, you don't know know where you're going to stay, where you're going to eat, where you're going to stop. that's prototy frightening. the green book eliminated a lot of that. not all of it, but it took a little edge off. >> how was the green book reproduced? was a printing press used and if so, who owned it? >> okay. well victor green owned it. it was his company. i had a clip earlier and there was a jewish gentleman whose father printed the green book. and he remembered victor green coming into the shop to get the -- you know, to present the job and get the job done. but there was some people in the printing business or in the printing shop who did not want to print victor green's book. but this gentleman, howard glenner said his father owned the business and told the guys there, this is my business, you're going to do the job. victor owned it. it was his copyright. you can print your own green book off. the new york public library has all of the books digitized. if you want to get our own copy of the green book, go and print it and you have your own copy. i think she had a question. >> for african americans who didn't have family in new york who were coming to new york to stay, how difficult was it during 1939, those years? >> well, they were traveling by car, it was very difficult. i'm pretty sure they slept in their car, ate in their car, did everything in the car, went to the bathroom in the woods, you know. once they got to new york, if they had family here, then they stayed with the family. i remember everybody staying at our house in baltimore when i was small. everybody had a roll away cart in the closet. you rolled it out with this big metal cart and had to unfold it. no one sfaed in the hotel. you had people everywhere, on the floor, you know. and so that was good. that's all you knew. as a kid it was kind of exciting. that's how pretty much it was. kind of like urban camping. but here's some listings of new york. some of these are brooklyn. you've got niagara falls, rod chester, poughkeepsie, these are taverns, you have port jervis, elmira, beauty shops, dance halls. so a little bit of everything, you know. and here's a better way to look at it. the do drop inn, brooklyn. see these tourist homes, that was just a regular house. see mrs. a.e. brine. that's how it was. it wasn't so much mister. it was the lady, the woman. and these women really took control over this green book enterprise. they really wanted to make sure travelers had some place to two. and that's -- so a lot of folks looking back at this time thinking it was all gloom and doom. but it really was a sharing of love. it wasn't all bad. it was really good. it was laughter. it was celebrations. it was meeting new friends, hearing stories. it was more good times than bad times. they made a way out of no way. and then when the young kids are missing, you know, that love of one another and being able to love someone you don't even know or a stranger, or showing that friendship and just things of that nature that was just out there, you know. and so people would -- you tell young folks today that people would open their homes up to someone traveling. they can't really imagine it. and this is proof that it went on and on, you know, for years, you know. didn't matter if you were lena horne or salary horne, you were traveling in harm's way. [ inaudible ] i'm not sure what those numbers are. i think they're maybe military time or something. [ inaudible ] it did? okay. [ inaudible ] >> carver federal savings and loan association. you got queens, brooklyn, the bronx, you know. so this is pretty amazing to compile all of this and to get it out there. you know -- okay. >> we have time for about two more questions. >> what was the charge for the book or were they free? >> they went anywhere from 25 cent to $1.25. the prices varied different years. i think a few years during world war ii there were no books printed at all. victor died in 1960. his wife alma kept it going for four more years. okay. >> so we have time for one more questi question. >> do you see the need now for the green book or is there a need now for the green book? >> well, you know, there's -- there's -- you know, it's funny. you know, the gay community for a while had their own network of places to stay and that was kind of like gay travel and where they felt safe. so that was like their green book. there's -- i know there's one black lady, i think in d.c. she's kind of connected a lot of african american people who own their own bed and breakfasts. you that network out there. you know, people wanting to do that, support businesses. so it's still, you know, a niche market. now it's out of -- ain't nothing wrong with it, you know. ain't nothing wrong with it. but i don't know about, you know, just -- you know, being -- is that the same spirit of the green book. this was like life saving and all kinds of things. now it's a luxury if you want to stay at a black bed and breakfast in brooklyn or florida or chicago. it's nice. ain't nothing wrong with that at all. they do exist and there's a network out there for that. >> so maybe one more. i saw a lot of hands. >> okay. >> i was curious about hotels in new york. i mean i know my parents stayed at one of the few hotels in new york that allowed black people to stay there. >> well, you know, it was different. like up where i interviewed paula, up at the polo grounds, she mentioned in her building at one time walter white from the naacp, thurgood marshal stayed there, judge bruce wright stayed there at one time in that building. but further up is a building count 555. gnat king cole would come in town and he couldn't stay in town. he could playdown town but couldn't stay downtown. what years were your parents stay ting there? >> they got married in '54. >> well you know, i guess it happens. but i know i read his article not too long ago that hairy bell fon taye was having a hard time finding a place. he ended up buying the building and sold the penthouse to lena horne. that's how he was able to get in the upper westside. >> do you know the websites url for the green book chronicles so people with keep up to date? >> my website is calvin sf zerntramsey sr..com, which is kind of long. but the green book chronicles, you know, you can go there, greenbo greenbo greenbookchronicles.com. i know a lot of adults getting the books for them. floyd cooper is my illustrator. a legend in illustrations. this guy is out of oklahoma, lives in pennsylvania with his wife and family. but he was -- he's just a marvelous illustrator. but the green book chronicles is the documentary. we hope to have it out as soon as we can. and i thank you all for coming out. appreciate it. [ applause ] >> thank you, calvin. wednesday morning on c-span3, a hearing about border security including effort to stop people from illegally crossing the southern border. the house oversight subcommittees on national security and government relations will hear from law enforcement, border patrol officials and legal analysts. live korng at 9:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span 3. american history tv on c-span 3. this weekend on saturday afternoon at 2:00 eastern, law professor jeffrey rosen talks about the influence of john marshal. >> adams famously said my gift of john marshal to the people of united states was the proudest act of my life. and marshal has been widely praised for transforming the supreme court into what his biographer john edward smith called a dominant force in american life. >> and at 10:00 on reel america -- >> the roll will put the shuttle on its precise heading. space shutting, a remarkable flying machine on the two-day maiden voyage of the space shuttle clum into yea. the 1968 campaign film for republican presidential candidate richard nixon. ♪ >> i have decided that i will test my ability to win and my ability to cope with the issues in the fires of the primaries and not just in the smoke filled room of miami. >> and at 1:00, a panel of authors on their recent books chronicling mexican civil rights from the 1930s to 1970s. >> in this coalition of labor unions with, mexican civil rights leaders and religious authorities came together to protest the exploitation of the program and in fact accelerated congress's decision to terminate it the next year in 1964. and i think this was a moment of blossoming for the what can that movement. >> for the complete schedule go to c-span.org. the need for horses on the farm began to decline radically in the 1930s. it was not until the 1930s that they figured out how to make a rubber tire big enough to fit on a tractor. and starting in the 1930s, 1940s, you had an almost complete replacement of horses as the work animals on farms. i believe one of my books on horses i read that in the decade after world war i irk we had something like a horse holocaust, that the horses were no longer needed and we didn't get rid of them in a very pretty way. >> sunday night on q&a, robert gordon, pronfessor of economics discusses his book "the rise and fall of american growth." >> one thing that often interests people is the impact of superstorm sandy on the east coast back in 2012. that wiped out the 20th century for many people. the elevators no longer worked in new york. the electricity stopped. you couldn't charge your cell phones. you couldn't pump gas into your car because it required electricity to pump the gas. so the power of electricity in the internal combustion engine to make modern life possible is something that people take for granted. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q&a. ♪ when i tune in to it on the weekends, usually it's authors sharing their new releases. >> watching the nonfiction authors on book tv is the best television for serious readers. >> on c-span they can have a longer conversation and delve into their subject. >> book tv weekends, they bring you author after author after author that spotlight the work of fascinating people. >> i love book tv and i'm a c-span fan. next on lectures in history, emory university professors hank kilbanoff and breath gadsden look at the politics in mid century georgia. they talk about a number of unsolved murders during the segregation era and the cold cases project. this class is about 90 minutes. because today what we're going to do, i'm going to open up the georgia civil rights cold cases, plural, class by taking note of a particular milestone that occurs -- is occurring this week. anybody know who this is? this is emmett till. now on this day, august 26, 1955, that's 60 years ago today, so i'm going to ask you to sort of take your mind back. i'm sure none of you remember that, right? none of you remember what happened 60 years ago. but we're going to take a measure of how long ago that really was in a minute. emmett till was