While pervasive racial discrimination and poverty limited black car ownership, the emerging African American middle class bought automobiles as soon as they could but faced a variety of dangers and inconveniences along the road, from refusal of food and lodging to arbitrary arrest.

[3] From a New York-focused first edition published in 1936, Green expanded the work to cover much of North America, including most of the United States and parts of Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda.

Shortly after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed the types of racial discrimination that had made the Green Book necessary, publication ceased and it fell into obscurity.

[8]Thousands of communities in the US had enacted Jim Crow laws that existed after 1890;[9] in such sundown towns, African Americans were in danger if they stayed past sunset.

After the end of legal slavery in the North and later in the South after the Civil War, most freedmen continued to live at little more than a subsistence level, but a minority of African Americans gained a measure of prosperity.

Du Bois observed that the impact of "ever-recurring race discrimination" had made it so difficult to travel to any number of destinations, from popular resorts to major cities, that it was now "a puzzling query as to what to do with vacations".

[12] In Cincinnati, the African American newspaper editor Wendell Dabney wrote of the situation in the 1920s that "hotels, restaurants, eating and drinking places, almost universally are closed to all people in whom the least tincture of colored blood can be detected".

[14] George Schuyler reported in 1943, "Many colored families have motored all across the United States without being able to secure overnight accommodations at a single tourist camp or hotel."

[15] One incident reported by Drake and Cayton illustrated the discriminatory treatment meted out even to black people within racially mixed groups: Two colored schoolteachers and several white friends attended a luncheon at an exclusive coffee shop.

[16] Black travelers often had to carry buckets or portable toilets in the trunks of their cars because they were usually barred from bathrooms and rest areas in service stations and roadside stops.

Courtland Milloy's mother, who took him and his brother on road trips when they were children, recalled: ... after riding all day, I'd say to myself, 'Wouldn't it be nice if we could spend the night in one of those hotels?'

[22] Even driving etiquette was affected by racism; in the Mississippi Delta region, local custom prohibited black people from overtaking whites, to prevent their raising dust from the unpaved roads to cover white-owned cars.

[18] Racist local laws, discriminatory social codes, segregated commercial facilities, racial profiling by police, and sundown towns made road journeys a minefield of constant uncertainty and risk.

He achieved it with "nerve, courage, and a great deal of luck", supplemented by "a rifle and shotgun, a road atlas, and Travelguide, a listing of places in America where Negroes can stay without being embarrassed, insulted, or worse".

[29] He noted that black drivers needed to be particularly cautious in the South, where they were advised to wear a chauffeur's cap or have one visible on the front seat and pretend they were delivering a car for a white person.

[29] Segregation meant that facilities for African American motorists in some areas were limited, but entrepreneurs of varied races realized that opportunities existed in marketing goods and services specifically to black patrons.

Jewish travelers, who had also long experienced discrimination at many vacation spots, created guides for their own community, though they were at least able to visibly blend in more easily with the general population.

[30][31] African Americans followed suit with publications such as Hackley and Harrison's Hotel and Apartment Guide for Colored Travelers, published in 1930[32] to cover "Board, Rooms, Garage Accommodations, etc.

It was conceived in 1932 and first published in 1936 by Victor Hugo Green, a World War I veteran from New York City who worked as a mail carrier and later as a travel agent.

[40] As well as essential information on lodgings, service stations, and garages, it provided details of leisure facilities open to African Americans, including beauty salons, restaurants, nightclubs, and country clubs.

[41] The listings focused on four main categories—hotels, motels, tourist homes (private residences, usually owned by African Americans, which provided accommodation to travelers), and restaurants.

Realizing the only way we knew where and how to reach our pleasure resorts was in a way of speaking, by word of mouth, until the publication of The Negro Motorist Green Book ... We earnestly believe that [it] will mean as much if not more to us as the A.A.A.

[31]While the Green Book was intended to make life easier for those living under Jim Crow, its publisher looked forward to a time when such guidebooks would no longer be necessary.

[40] The Green Book was published locally in New York City, but its popularity was such that from 1937 it was distributed nationally with input from Charles McDowell, a collaborator on Negro affairs for the U.S. Travel Bureau, a government agency.

[54] With the book's growing success, Green retired from the post office and hired a small publishing staff that operated from 20 West 135th Street in Harlem.

[13] Although segregation was still in force, by state laws in the South and often by practice elsewhere, the wide circulation of the Green Book had attracted growing interest from white businesses that wanted to tap into the potential sales of the black market.

The 1955 edition noted: A few years after its publication ... white business has also recognized its [The Green Book's] value and it is now in use by the Esso Standard Oil Co., The American Automobile Assn.

An increasing number of middle class African Americans were beginning to question whether guides such as the Green Book were accommodating Jim Crow by steering black travelers to segregated businesses rather than encouraging them to push for equal access.

The 1963 Green Book acknowledged that the activism of the civil rights movement had "widened the areas of public accommodations accessible to all", but it defended the continued listing of black-friendly businesses because "a family planning for a vacation hopes for one that is free of tensions and problems".

[58] In the 2000s, academics, artists, curators, and writers exploring the history of African American travel in the United States during the Jim Crow era revived interest in the Green Book.