So far so close
The Green Book, a trip to segregationist America (2/2)
Audio 48:30
The "Negro Motorist Green Book" was described as the bible of the black motorist and traveler under Jim Crow laws.
© Smithsonian/ Scurlock Addison N./ Wikimedia
By: Céline Develay Mazurelle Follow
3 mins
On the occasion of the "Black History Month" which is held in France and around the world in February, we invite you to set off on a journey through the pages of the Green Book.
For 30 years, during segregation in America, this travel guide has allowed black citizens and travelers to carve the road too...
Advertising
Getting in the car and racing through the great outdoors is one of the founding myths of travel in America.
Except that during segregation, this individual freedom, torn from the road, was not self-evident for blacks, confined, confined to their own country.
Traveling for black citizens was done at their own risk, hardship and fear.
And yet, they hit the road and snatched that freedom, with the help of an amazing little green book: the Green Book.
Both a travel and survival guide for African-Americans in the era of racial segregation, this guide created in 1936 by Victor H. Green, a postman from Harlem, set out to list the safe places where they could s stop along the way, across the country…
Recently, Hollywood took hold of this guide, an object as crazy and unthinkable as the times it was trying to answer.
However, he is still little known in the United States and even more so in Europe.
Published for 30 years, the "Negro Motorist Green Book" tells above all about the ingenuity, resilience and incredible vitality of the black community, despite adversity and Jim Crow laws.
What is called the black experience, compared to the fairy tale that white America liked to tell itself...
A radio story in 2 episodes by Céline Develay-Mazurelle and Laure Allary, initially broadcast in April 2021.
With the help of the American documentary filmmaker
Candacy Taylor
and around the sound archives she collected, as part of a collection for the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress.
Learn more:
- On
Candacy Taylor and her book "
Overground Railroad"
, published in 2020 in the United States by
Éditions Abrams
, the result of an immense investigation over nearly 80,000 kilometers and more than 5,000 sites listed by the Green Book, through the United States.
A fascinating and moving book.
- Candacy Taylor has also carried out valuable work collecting testimonies on the Green Book for
the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress
.
Find it online.
- The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture concentrates different editions of the Green Book, go to the
New York Public Library
website to browse them in digital version.
- On the current issue of the mass incarceration of African-Americans, echoing the question of black mobility in the United States, watch
the documentary "13th" by Ava Duvernay
.
It is available for free online!
- On the latest book by French historian and Americanist Sylvie Laurent: “
Poor little White.
The Myth of Racial Dispossession
”.
2020. Editions of the House of Human Sciences.
To extend the trip:
- "
Black American Dream
", our 3-episode radio series on the road to civil rights in Alabama and Georgia that put us on the path to the Green Book.
- "
The Underground Railroad in Canada
", another radio series in 3 episodes on the innumerable paths of freedom drawn and trodden by African-Americans during the time of slavery.
American documentary filmmaker Candacy Taylor, author of "Overground Railroad", in front of Clifton's restaurant, a hotspot for the black community in Los Angeles and referenced by the Green Book.
© Katrina Parks
►
To listen to The Green Book, episode 1 again
.
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
United States
Racism
Slavery
Travel
On the same subject
So far so close
The Underground Railroad in Canada (1/3)
Movie theater
Cinema Oscars: “Roma” and “Green Book” consecrated
So far so close
Black American Dream 1