The Negro Motorist Green Book,” later renamed “The Negro Travelers’ Green Book,” was an annual guidebook first published in 1936 that gave African American travelers essential information about safe places to stay, dine, and obtain services while traveling in the segregated United States during the Jim Crow era. Jim Crow laws forced racial segregation and were enforced harshly, often with violence. The laws lasted close to 100 years until the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s. The Green Book and similar publications helped keep Black travelers safe during this time and provided them with some measure of freedom of movement.
Learn how Esso stations created safe havens for Black motorists to fill their gas tanks and how hotels such as the Banneker House, the Hotel Dale, and Richardson’s Hotel, among others in Cape May, along with guest houses in Wildwood, gave Black visitors safe spaces to relax at the seaside on holiday or for business.