This is Amy Wagenaar from the Historical Society of Michigan with a Michigan history moment. They were called Green Books. During the mid 20th century, the pamphlets helped African Americans navigate a treacherous landscape. Travel wasn't easy for African Americans. Outright racial segregation with signs that read white only were in the South. But racial discrimination was everywhere. Restaurants, hotels and motels, gas stations, automobile repair shops, pharmacies, and even beauty salons might or might not serve African American customers. Countless towns, north and south, had sundown laws that imposed an evening curfew on all African Americans. How could travelers get around? In 1936, a New Jersey postal carrier named Victor Hugo Greene published a new pamphlet to guide African American motorists. He titled it the Negro Traveler's Green Book, but most people simply called it the Green Book. To compile that little pamphlet, Green had enlisted the help of other mail carriers from around the country to identify businesses that welcomed African American patronage. For inspiration, he drew on similar publications that helped Jewish motorists that also encountered discrimination. Only Detroit businesses appeared in the first green book in 1936, but the 1949 edition listed a dozen towns and cities. The editions from the 1960s included 18 communities. Even then, African American travelers often had few options. In 1949, for example, the African American resort community of Idyllwild offered a wide range of welcoming businesses, as did Detroit. But in most towns, such as Grand Junction, Muskegon, Oscoda, and South Haven, the Green Book listed only a single tourist home and no other businesses. Thanks to an arrangement with the Standard Oil Company, Esso gas stations all over the country sold Green Books. Eventually, annual sales of green Books reached 15,000 copies. African Americans came to rely on it. As one man recalled, you literally didn't dare leave home without it. Victor Greene died in 1960, but his wife, Alma, took over and kept the Green Book going. As Victor Green had written in the book's 1948 edition, there will be a day, sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. While he didn't live to see it, his wish came true in the 1960s. The Civil Rights act of 1964 outlawed racial discrimination in businesses. The last edition of the Green Book came out in 1966. This Michigan history moment was brought to you by Michigan History magazine. Org.