Topics: African Americans, African Studies, Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization
The 'Green Book' Was a Travel Guide Just for Black Motorists, Danielle Moodie-Mills, NBCBLK, October 11, 2016
The meaning of SANKOFA, Sankofa.org/about
Happy Black History Month (tomorrow), for what it's worth at the moment.
The Green Book: Guide to Freedom is a documentary about the emergence of the Black middle class in the 1940s and 1950s. The documentary explores the dangerous journeys Black people took outside their cities and the book that helped guide them.
The book, The Negro Motorist Green Book, was a guide for Black people to find places to eat, drink, shop, and stay overnight. The book was no longer needed after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed the racial discrimination that made it necessary. Google AI
The Google AI stated that it's "not available on Hulu," which was news to me, as I had just watched it on Hulu (probably because I saved it in my "favorites" and the Hulu streaming gods left me alone - they get paid monthly).
The Negro Motorist Green Book, popularly known as the Green Book, was a travel guide intended to help African American motorists avoid social obstacles prevalent during the period of racial segregation, commonly referred to as Jim Crow. The Green Book listed businesses that would accept African American customers.
The book was the vision of Victor Green, an African American US postal employee from Harlem, New York. The first guide focused on Metropolitan New York. The next year, in 1937, Green expanded listings to other locations. His book would eventually include every state and several international destinations before ceasing publication in 1964. Before its demise, the book was the most popular of several tourist guides created specifically for an African American audience.
These types of travel guides were necessary during the Jim Crow era because African Americans were subject to acts of discrimination and occasional intimidation as many businesses refused to accept them as customers. African American motorists, for example, were warned to avoid sundown towns which required minorities to be outside the city limits before sundown, hence the name. African American travel could be fraught with risk and guides like the Green Book were an important resource.
Black Past dot org: The Negro Motorist Green Book (1936 - 1964)
One of the unintended consequences of the success of the Civil Rights Movement is a lot of businesses that sprang up in reaction to segregation now had to compete with larger corporations during "integration" that could offer more services. Many businesses that advertised in the Green Book no longer exist, boarded up, and condemned, many are not even memorialized with a historical designation in the cities they were located. The FW Woolworth International Civil Rights Museum is a noted exception and the Magnolia House (listed in The Green Book), both in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Tabitha Brown and Melissa Butler have sounded the alarm on the unintended consequences of boycotting businesses that have removed their DEI initiatives. Like the black-owned businesses post-Green Book, they might not survive, and it took years to get their products placed in the "big box" stores. Their sales dropping would mean they would be removed from the shelves they fought so long to occupy, in favor of the products the corporation would promote over theirs. Again, going into spaces that took considerable effort to sell products in gives our (as of 2019) 910 billion dollars, projected to be 1.7 trillion in 2030 consumer impact, it would seem that we lack both focus and vision: that buying power impacts Target and similar businesses giving our dollars on the altar of corporate indifference. We seem to justify finding our own backdoors.
“If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.”
― Carter Godwin Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro
"Who taught you to hate yourself? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? To such an extent you bleach, to get like the white man. Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much so that you don't want to be around each other?"
Who Taught You to Hate Yourself? Malcolm X, May 5, 1962, Genius dot com
Sixty-three years ago, Malcolm called the motives of the Antioch High School shooter. He posted anti-black, antisemitic tropes online. Who taught him to hate himself?
Boycotts are the knee-jerk, go-to tactic we gravitate to without an understanding of the mathematics of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: 30,000 - 40,000 African Americans participated, 90% of the black residents participated, and they comprised 75% of the bus company's customers. Therefore, unless the clientele of Target and Walmart match Montgomery's numbers, any thought of a boycott will only hurt these black businesses.
The irony of these dark times is this blatant white supremacy should drive us closer together. In our 0.9 to 1.7 trillion dollar demographic, only two cents gets to the African American community:
An NAACP study found that a dollar circulates in Asian communities for 30 days, as opposed to six hours in Black communities. It found that only two cents of every dollar African Americans spend goes to Black-owned businesses. One researcher estimated that if Black consumers spent at least one dollar out of every ten with Black businesses, it could generate one million jobs for African Americans. Minority buying power can do far more than purchase; it can become an investment in stronger, local communities.
The Color of Money: Reaping the Dividends of Entrepreneurship [March 2, 2016], National Urban League
One dollar out of every ten is ten cents per dollar of the 0.9 to eventually 1.7 trillion dollars we freely give to this economy for continued disrespect, disheartening policy decisions, and abject hatred of our contributions to this nation. A tithe, and we don't have to ask anyone's permission to do so. This cooperation is beyond reflexive boycotts without clear goals and the will to be uncomfortable for long terms: the Montgomery boycott lasted over a year.
Wakanda and its superhero ruler, T'Challa/The Black Panther, is a fantasy comic book product (the first black superhero) developed by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, for Marvel.
Mansa Musa ruled the Mali Empire, and unlike the fictional wealth of the nonexistent element, Vibranium, his wealth was from the conventional element of gold and the mineral salt. He was said to have been the richest person who has ever lived.
This present darkness may be the thing we need to come together again. Ten cents won't get us the Mali Empire, or Wakanda, but it might get us independence, freedom, a sense of control of our own destinies, and peace of mind. It will be as long, or longer than a boycott, but we would have to work together towards a common goal. It would be the last thing they would expect us to do. The dominant society is counting on it that we won't. We will also have to be willing to literally fight for it because as history has shown in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Rosewood, Florida, success attracts the jealousy of psychopaths.
Sankofa.
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