The book’s slogan, a Mark Twain quote: “Travel is fatal to prejudice”.
Well, maybe.
Mr. Green started in NYC, that being where he resided, and added more information as sent by readers. If there was more information on the South it’s simply because more people wrote to him from there; logical when you think of population densities.
If this was mainly compiled by reports from readers and readers were primarily black, then the reason for few Oregon places is because there were relatively few blacks in Oregon at the time. Especially before WWII. At that time there were only about 2000 blacks in the entire state.
This not to say there was no racism in Oregon. There was tons of it. Still is in many parts of the state.
Definitely not. The state constitution specifically banned African Americans from even living in the state, let alone owning any sort of property. Hell, it didn’t even ratify the 15th Amendment (letting blacks vote) till 1959. The same for the 14th (natural born citizen) till 1973. This article kind of goes over the legally ratified history of racism in Oregon.
A while back, I read a self-published book by a white Midwestern man who contracted polio shortly before the vaccine came out in the early 1950s, and after he recovered from the disease itself, he and his father went to the center in Warm Springs, GA for further therapy. En route, they stopped at some place that had a public restroom and two black men in the facility were looking at them oddly; they assumed it was because of his wheelchair until they exited the restroom and saw the “COLORED” sign on the door. They hadn’t noticed, nor would they have cared; all they saw was the “MEN” part of the sign.
Also a while back, we were talking about these books on another website, and one poster said that s/he wondered how many white people purchased them while traveling, so they would only patronize establishments where everyone was welcome.
That’s just incredible, and beyond disgusting.
Note that once a Constitutional amendment is ratified, it becomes the law in all states. States who hadn’t ratified it yet often didn’t bother to make the gesture.
According to the wiki article, seven states including Oregon specifically rejected the 15th amendment, some before ratification, some after. So they don’t get off the hook.
Yup. Plenty of good ol’ boys who went overseas to fight in one or the other of the World Wars, and came back just as much bigoted assholes as ever.
One of Lee Harvey Oswald’s few redeeming qualities was that he always defied segregation in New Orleans and purposefully sat in the back of the bus.
Wow. I’m… glad I missed that episode.
Yes, considering that Oregon was founded as a whites-only state, that’s not surprising at all.
Esso stations were desegregated as a matter of corporate policy. They also sold the Green Book, allowing it to reach its targeted audience quickly.
I am an “Investigation Discovery” addict, and last night I caught a program from 2015 from the series “The Injustice Files” (Al Roker andKeith Beauchamp, producers) that dealt with sundown towns. Accompanying Beauchamp for part of the trip to investigate historical sundown towns was James Loewen. They seemed to imply that most of the sundown towns were not in the South, though, and the ones they investigated were in Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana. In any case, though, the “Negro Motorist Green Book” was mentioned and featured prominently in the program.
Link?
Just in case it’s not obvious, that’s a parody, drawn by a cartoonist who made a career out of caricatures. You can read the interview the image appears in for yourself, if you like, but he comes across as a hack trying to justify himself to me.
If you’re asking for a link to the program, it was this.
I first became aware of the Green Book in the 1990s when a different sort of Green Book started to be published. It was a list of hotels that were friendly to LGBTQ couples. When that one made the news, the reporting made the comparison.
Yes, I got that, thanks. This might be of interest: Was 'The Andy Griffith Show' Postracial?
It’s not surprising, considering the original Oregon state constitution banned black people from the state entirely.
I checked out copies from the 40s and the 60s and looked up Ohio. There was not a single listing for Cleveland’s West Side in the book. Nothing below E. 40th st, even. I’ve always known that the west side was more white but damn, seems like it’s always been historically un-welcoming to blacks.