Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in… (vuoden 2020 painos)

There are things we don't know, but can learn. Just as there are things we can learn, but never really know. This book travels a familiar road unrecognizable to many of us. Fascinating, heart-breaking, disturbing and hopeful. Not an academic volume, but full of revelation. ( )

I thought I knew the story of the Green Book, but from the beginning I knew I did not know that much. It never occurred to me why Blacks in the 1930’and 1940’s chose to drive at night. Nor did I know how the automobile industry helped Blacks find work. Taylor’s trip across America to find the ruminates of what was presented in the Green book was heartbreaking in the discovery than less than 5% of the businesses are still in operation. I listened to the audiobook, which was good, but because of the accompanying photographs and drawings, I would prefer this book in print. I do not even recommend Kindle. ( )

4.5/5 stars

WOW!
The power of sharing personal true stories rings through time and time again with Taylor’s tribute to the Green Book and those Black individuals, couples, and families who traveled the “Overground Railroad” - powerful primary source documents and photographs are juxtaposed amid poignant prose.

Quotes of Note:
“History doesn’t repeat itself. Humans do.” - Jelani Cobb

Langston Hughes poem, “Beaumont to Detroit: 1943”

“I don’t care if you’re the pope or the president...You have to eat. And I can cook for you...If I can get the people on both sides [of the political spectrum] to just sit down at my table, I think we can work this out.” Leah Chase, owner & chef, Dookey Chase’s, New Orleans, Louisiana

My next read in relation to this book will be Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which has been on my TBR list. ( )

This is a handsome book and kudos to the design team which produced this book. Segregation meant that a guide was necessary beyond word of mouth where African Americans would be welcome: not only lodging and restaurants, but gas stations and drug stores. Not only auto travel is covered but also travel by train, which had its own rules on segregation. Blacks were not fond of Route 66 as there was no list of sundown towns and distances between potential stopping places were long. The Green Book was published from 1936 to 1966. ( )

There is much to appreciate in this book, but frankly, it's a bit of a mess. It's not a professionally written history book. In the end, I wasn't sure if the project of documenting The Green Book prompted the author's diversion of focus away from it, or if it was the other way around, the project was used as a structure to get at the issues she really wanted to talk about all along. What did I appreciate? Certainly, reading about a number of "facilities" from the not so distant past that provided comfort and safety to those of America who had no expectation of getting what all Americans should be able to get regardless of their race. This book certainly gives much depth to what a white reader, and maybe even some younger black readers, might have first been introduced to in the recent movie, Green Book. A dimension of the social dynamics that even made The Green Book necessary in the first place were the "sundown towns" in which blacks were banned from being in for any reason after sundown. Not just on the other side of the tracks, so to speak, but not in town at all. This book makes it perfectly clear this was not an issue only in Southern states, as the movie mentioned earlier might suggest. It's in a chapter about Route 66, the notable U.S. highway where it became crystal clear to me how much my own connection to past racist towns was so obvious. To start, my younger brother was born in a former sundown town in Illinois. My older brother went to college in a different town where barbershops had been segregated. My wife was born in another town where the Klu Klux Klan had held cross-burning rallies in a popular tourist location, and a cousin lives in a former sundown town in California. None of these places were in former Confederate states. My, my, weren't we white folks wide spread in our American racism? On the negative side, there are a number of little things -- which I will not itemize here -- that show a lack of professionalism in producing this book, but the one that really floored me was the author's error on knowing when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and when Richard Nixon took office as U.S. president. I mean google it, why not, even if you weren't alive yet, like I was. Ultimately, that leads me to the final impression I ended up with, that the author approaches the information she has on issues very much like too many people on social media do, i.e. not knowing what they don't know, but assuming they know all that is needed to be known. ( )