Black Travelers Cannot Safely Use White Hotels, Restaurants, or Gas Stations Across America

The reality that necessitated the Green Book (first published 1936) was fully established by the 1910s: Black travelers in the United States faced systematic danger in attempting to use hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and roadside facilities throughout the country — not just the South. Turned away from accommodations, Black travelers had to rely on networks of Black-owned boarding houses and the hospitality of Black families. Traveling through sundown towns at night was genuinely dangerous. The total restriction on Black travel and commerce across enormous swaths of America constituted a form of ongoing economic exclusion and physical containment.