Recalling ‘Green Book,’ Guide for Black Travelers

Recalling ‘Green Book,’ Guide for Black Travelers - NYTimes.com: For a large swath of the nation’s history “the American democratic idea of getting out on the open road, finding yourself, heading for distant horizons was only a privilege for white people,” said Cotton Seiler, the author of Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America, who devoted a chapter of his book to the experience of black travelers. The 'Green Book' was a guidebook that told you not where the best places were to eat, but where there was any place.

Historians of travel have recognized that the great American road trip — seen as an ultimate sign of freedom — was not that free for many Americans, including those who had to worry about “sunset laws” in towns where black visitors had to be out by day’s end.