BLACK HISTORY: Green Book Was ‘Like a Bible’ for Black Travelers

by Andy Fox

Feb 22, 2024 / 06:22 PM EST

HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) — Imagine a period of time in our history where a class of people carried a book to find businesses that would welcome them.

A movie was even made about it.

Many from that period of time remember it as “The Negro Motorist Green-Book.”

Thursday, we honor Black history with how that book impacted the lives of the people who were constantly denied access. It provided information on safe places for African Americans to eat, sleep and put gas in their cars, and it listed businesses that were friendly to Black customers.

The Green Book was published by Victor Hugo Green, who was a letter carrier from New York. He published it every April from 1936 until 1967, and it cost 25 cents per copy.

It was said, “the green book became a safe place, you’d carry in the palm of your hands.”

The Bay Shore Hotel near Buckroe Beach was full of sound and life and a place where you’d find the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway.

House of Delegates member Jeion Ward (D-Hampton), while in her Richmond office, “so, we had a good time. I remember coming of age and remembering everybody was dancing. There was a party going on, everybody was clapping. It was great fun.”

Ward felt safe there. After all, the Bay Shore Hotel was in what was known as “The Negro Motorist Green-Book,” and The Bay Shore Hotel was known as “Virginia’s Only Seaside Resort for Our People.”

“The Green Book was like a Bible, a survivor’s guide for Black travelers,” Ward said on the floor of the House of Delegates in 2019. It could save your life if you followed it closely, or it could cause your death if you didn’t.”

It listed “tourist homes” African Americans could stay in.

“They were not hotels, they were just rooms, people that would let you stay there overnight, and you could get a meal most of the time,” Ward said.

“The book also warned of sundown towns,” Ward said, “counties, and cities where Blacks were not allowed after dark … the signs read ‘Negros don’t let the sunset on you in the town.”

Following her speech about her life and the Green Book, Ward got a standing ovation, and it inspired fellow former Del. Michael Mullin to introduce legislation establishing Green Book historic site designations the first of which was the former Bay Shore Hotel.

“Right here in Hampton, it was important to have the first designation because this legislation was here in Hampton,” Mullin said, “and it was important because this legislation was inspired by Del. Ward’s life and story,”

Ward told the story of how her family could not find a friendly place in the Green Book to go to the bathroom, so they would go outside.

“My shoes were muddy, and my socks were wet,” Ward said, holding up the white socks. “No matter how hard I tried to be careful, my socks got wet, and I hated it. I think I will go to my grave hating these little white anklet socks because of the memories they bring back to me.”

“One, two, three,” the crowd counted with Gov. Glenn Youngkin last October as they took off the cover of the first Green Book marker that read “Bay Shore Hotel.”

Helen Phillips Pitts was one of those in attendance at the dedication.

“I had no idea until I was grown that my grandfather was part of this group of men that started Bayshore Beach,” she said.

John Mallory Phillips, along with others and Charles Williams, founded the New Bay Shore Corporation to establish what is called the “Largest paradise in the south for African American travelers.”

“This is the price we pay for progress,” Charles Williams would say.

Allen Hoilman, a curator at the Hampton History Museum, remembered those words from Charles Williams after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made segregation of public accommodations illegal.

“Unfortunately, now their clientele had all the choices in the world instead of these limited choices they were used to,” Hoilman said. “… Their clientele dropped, profits dropped, and Bayshore could not thrive successfully as a business.”

And there was no longer a need for the Green Book, which stopped publication in 1967.

And the Bay Shore Hotel property would be sold in 1973.

“Jim Crow is dead,” Ward said from the House floor, “and it’s up to each one of us to make this world a better place, not only for ourselves, but for our grandchildren.”

Currently across Virginia, there are seven historic sites.

The goal, Ward said, is to have 300 plaques put up to remind the Commonwealth of its past, so that it is not repeated.