032 Overground Railroad, author interview

Bob Smith 0:00
she set out to write a book on African American travel, but wove a much bigger story. Coming up and interview with Ken Desi Taylor, author of overground railroad, the Green Book and the roots of black travel in America on the off ramp with Bob Smith.

Welcome to the off ramp a chance to slow down steer clear of crazy, take a side road to Saturday and get some perspective on life. Many Americans today are unaware that there once was a thriving rising middle class of African Americans who owned black businesses were black entrepreneurs, black professionals, or were black Americans with good jobs in industry. Once they were able to afford automobiles, they began to face new kinds of discrimination. The green book published by a black postal worker in New York City was one of many guidebooks that told African Americans about black owned or black friendly businesses where they could eat, sleep and fill their gas tanks in safety as they traveled. Our guest today can Desi Taylor set out to write about the Green Book. But as she began traveling to sites of all the green book businesses and finding most of them in horrible neighborhoods and dilapidated conditions, she realized these weren’t the same vibrant neighborhoods they once were. So she expanded her book in an effort to determine why Why did all of that change and the result is one of the best history books I’ve ever read. It’s full of facts. But more importantly, it’s got great stories. Now there have been many great books about discrimination lately, the help a great book on domestic workers. But how many of us have been made so Butler’s and figures about black women who worked for NASA, how many of us have worked for the space industry, but all of us understand driving, we understand the freedom of getting in your car and going wherever you want. Now, imagine not being able to take a car you own on the road in this country without harassment. Imagine how you’d have to plan a cross country trip. Knowing there are places you couldn’t eat, sleep, or get your car fueled or repaired. These are all things the green book helped black Americans do. And when you follow that black trip planning step by step you put yourself in other people’s shoes, and learn what racism truly means. The book’s title is overground railroad, the Green Book and the roots of black travel in America by Ken Desi Taylor. And it’s being hailed as one of the major books of 2020. As a history book, it certainly opened my eyes. We spoke by phone just 13 days after it was published. Appropriately, our conversation took place on Martin Luther King Junior’s birthday, my thanks to Boswell books in Milwaukee for helping make this interview happen. You have done a remarkable job of creating, you’ve gone beyond just the green book to do a social history of African American life in the 20th century, and I never really experienced history from the African American point of view, as I have in reading your book. So I have to give you a big compliment on that. Thank you

Speaker 1 3:32
for saying that. It was a tall order and made it much more complicated. The Yeah, when I pitched the idea to Abrams, and I had my proposal together, it was just going to be a book about the Green Book. But once I really went to all of these neighborhoods, and saw where these green book sites have been clustered, you know, I can literally see the scars of redlining and urban renewal on these communities. You can tell that this wasn’t the America that Victor Green, who are the green book was was engaged with. And so by the time I sat down to write, I went back to Abrams and said, You know, I really think this is a different kind of book and I want to rewrite my proposal and see if you agree, and if we don’t, we can do the book that I pitched to you before. So they said, Okay, so I reread the proposal and everybody agreed, like this was a better way

Bob Smith 4:30
to go. I love the way your book starts with the story of your stepfather being in the car and the car is stopped. And the law enforcement officer is berating your grandfather, basically, where did you get this car and there’s a story of the chauffeurs cap and I had no I’d never heard these stories before about the chauffeurs caps. Yeah,

Speaker 1 4:50
the story I had been reading about in the research that and I just went in kitchen one day I said you know I keep hearing about the show first hats. You know, it’s true. And he said, Yeah, and he the story tumbled out of his mouth. But you know, it happened to him when he was seven years old, riding in the backseat of his parents car. And again, I know this man, most of my life I knew grew up in the Jim Crow South. But all of a sudden, these stories that I never heard, he told me the last about two years of his life, and the story essentially is they’re driving north leaving Tennessee just to go on a short vacation to see family members and and they get pulled over by the sheriff and the sheriff. And they have a new car to 1953 Chevy. And yeah, it’s a nice, it’s a new car and his father worked for the railroad and had a good job. So anyway, the sheriff comes to the door and says, Whose car is this? And grew these people with you? And where are you going? And flaunt watching all this. And this father says, basically, you know, this is my employers car. They looked at his wife and pretended and knower and said, She’s a maid, and this is her son. I’m driving them home. Which was incredible. You know, Ron just couldn’t believe it. And the shirts are Where’s your hat. And trato was hanging right in the back off back there and wanted that chippers hat that always been back there. He had no idea was the chauffeur side, he just met with a black hat. He didn’t know why it was there, what it was used for. But he said after that day, he thought and most almost every other black man’s car he wrote in, and especially if they had a nicer car, because they were driving a car that possibly a police officer couldn’t afford. So

Bob Smith 6:47
if you had a car, you faked it, pretending like it wasn’t yours, you were driving through your employer. And if it was a better car, if it was a good brand new car, the danger was the officer might feel jealous that you could afford something better than him and you were black.

Speaker 1 7:04
That was unacceptable. And that kind of jealousy could present itself in all kinds of ways from harassment to murder. So it was a very real tool, and a prop that saved people’s lives on the road. You

Bob Smith 7:18
still told the story of the green book, but I love the fact that you surrounded it with this context, because I was reading the book just to learn more about the green book and this effort. But I came away with a much better understanding as a white person of what it had been like to live as a African American in the United States for the past 100 years. It was fascinating.

Speaker 1 7:39
Thank you. Yeah, I’m so glad that it worked. Because we still look at the Green Books chronologically through the book, right? It’s a very the green book is very central to the book. But it’s you’re looking at Black history through the lens of the green book,

Bob Smith 7:54
just what was the green book for African Americans.

Speaker 1 7:57
The Green Book was a travel guide that was published for black people during the Jim Crow era, started publication 1936 was published through 1967 was created by a man named Victor Green, he was a postal worker from Harlem a seventh grade education. brilliant man, there were other black traveler guides about a dozen other black traveler guides during this time. But what made the Green Book special and the reason why it was survived at longer and had the broadest reach of any of those other travel guides was because of Victor greens. Brilliant. Part

Bob Smith 8:34
of that brilliance included greens partnership with the ESCO corporation. So which today is known as Exxon was a pioneer in embracing black travelers and black entrepreneurs, many of whom became so franchise owners, blacks could count on an ESCO service station as being a black friendly place to stop, fill up the tank refresh and move on. He

Speaker 1 8:56
also had a network of postal workers throughout the country because the postal workers unions were segregated. And black social workers worked in black neighborhoods. And so we had this access to these businesses that were in these black neighborhoods, which helped advertising you know, find more people to advertise in the green book, so they just stuck with it. In his wife all Madhu green, was also a major factor, I think, in his success 1959 She’s actually listed as a publisher and the editor, and she takes it over when Victor Green dies in 1962 People from the New Amsterdam News, Melbourne tablet and Langley Waller she hands it to them in the early 60s, and then they they finished the tender the Green Book in 67. So it’s a fascinating piece of history that many historians most of us didn’t even know existed until more recently. So it’s a really exciting thing for was to discover that there were nearly 10,000 businesses listed in the green book. That’s a real testament to black entrepreneurship and resilient. I

Bob Smith 10:09
love the way it evolved also from a travel and lodging book to incorporate shopping, housing. After the GI Bill, it was where to get an education, what kind of colleges would accept black applicants because many, many colleges didn’t. And you go through the black migration and the American labor movement and all the way up to black incarceration race, you talk about so many things. So what were some of the obstacles for black travelers that required a book like the green book?

Speaker 1 10:42
Well, the green book came on the scene, like I said, 1936 When Victor Graham’s creating the Green Book in 1935, Harlem race riots broke out. And even Harlem was segregated. So most people assume after the Harlem Renaissance in the 20s, that Harlem was this black mecca for black folks. And in some ways it was but it was still very segregated. And half the businesses along 125th Street, didn’t let Black people go inside of them. Or they were relegated to the work, they couldn’t sit in the orchestra seats are meant to enter through the back. So even within Victor Green Harlem, because the first edition is just about Harlan. So Victor Green really just was creating a solution for a problem he had right in his community. And Victor Green was also driving his wife Alma, to Richmond, Virginia regularly to see her family. And that was also a big eye opening moment for him thinking, well, we need this, not just in Harlem, I mean, this would be useful anywhere you would go. And so that’s when he used his network of social workers to help him get more people listed. And by 1938 39, he had every state that was east of the Mississippi River, listed in the green book, because as black folks traveled, I mean, there were sundown towns throughout the country. And these were sundown towns were all white town, they were all white on purpose, they would have signs saying and we’re don’t let the sun set on you here. Some of these towns had a bell that would bring it 6pm to alert the local black people who were laborers to leave town, they could work, they could come in and work magically by 6pm. So you know, there were many challenges and potential violent encounters that black people had to think about when they were traveling. And also, by the time the 40s come and the green book really is expanded after the war, you’ve got the second wave of the Great Migration happening. So you’ve got about 1.5 million black people leaving the south and heading north, fleeing racial terror, or hoping for better jobs. And

Bob Smith 12:52
they discovered a lot of the same discrimination north that they had in the south, probably weren’t expecting. Yeah,

Speaker 1 12:59
in some ways, is the irony of even sundown towns. If you take that, you know, they were largely a northern Midwestern and western concept. For instance, the state of Illinois had over 400 sundown towns in it. And yet there were only about 13 in the state of Mississippi.

Unknown Speaker 13:19
That’s amazing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 13:22
So the North was by no means a safe, Mecca, you know, place for black people to land. And it became even more complicated in some ways, because they didn’t have the segregated sides of the Jim Crow South

Bob Smith 13:36
can Desi says the northern city of Chicago was a prime example of that. It wasn’t a sundown town. But it had hidden obstacles for black travelers,

Speaker 1 13:45
where you thought like Chicago would be more free. But you couldn’t go past Cottage Grove Avenue. And you’d have to just learn by word of mouth that, you know, you were gonna get harassed. If you were in this neighborhood or that you couldn’t, you definitely couldn’t rent. And most neighborhoods, there were only certain parts of town that you were really allowed to be. But it wasn’t very clear yours in the South. They were pretty

Bob Smith 14:12
straightforward. The guests right, you had a couple of anecdotes where people said well, at least in the south, they were honest with you. Our guest is Ken Desi Taylor, the author of overground railroad, the Green Book and the roots of black travel in America. We’ll be back with more in just a moment. We continue now with author Ken Desi Taylor on the off ramp with Bob Smith. Until you walk through a typical trip a black family might take as you do in your book. You don’t realize all the attendant problems black motorists and black families faced. There were Garages of refuse to serve blacks and refused to fix your car. There were restaurants where you couldn’t go. There were certainly motels and lodging establishments. Wouldn’t deal with you. If you had an insurance problem with your car, you might not even be able to buy insurance because you were black. I was astounded to learn that in parts of the south, if you are a black person, and we’re driving a car, you could be arrested for passing a white person. amazing amount of information here, that is one of the reviewers I read, said it’s a real eye opener, it really is.

Speaker 1 15:24
And the irony is males black woman, I’ve been a travel writer for many years. And, you know, I went to college took a lot of black history courses, about 20 years ago, and I didn’t even learn these things that I learned when I sat down to research this book, and I realized how much of our history has been denied. And not just black folks, but all Americans. You know, I think that that’s a real, that’s the real tragedy here is that we have not been told the truth. There’s this belief system in America that things just keep getting better that you know, that, you know, we just learn from our mistakes. And after the Civil Rights Act was passed, we just put the laws into place. And we, you know, we made sure that you couldn’t discriminate anymore, and and then life was better for black folks. And that’s not what happened. I mean, things. There were so many different ways that the pendulum would swing forward for justice, and then swing back. And so it made total sense to me after we had a president like Barack Obama, that there would be Trump. And that’s what the book really does. It kind of follows that pendulum of justice when things got better. For Black both ironically, in the 30s, things were much better in terms of, you know, the car and how much it was assemble, not just assemble, but a real physical tool that shielded black folks from segregation, and also an industry that gave black folks, you know, that were really much better than if they had just been a porter or a laborer or waiter or an elevator operator. So I wanted to really drive home that progressive racial equality have never traveled in a straight line. And our history,

Bob Smith 17:14
you did that very well. And what I found so your statistics fascinating, the rise of the black middle class business people in the 30s, at one point, there were like 70,000, small businesses owned by black Americans. What Where did those go? I mean, that’s for a modern day person. That’s, that’s an astounding statistic. Because they’re not aware of this rise and fall and rise and fall, as you indicated, what are some of the reactions you’ve gotten from readers to your book?

Speaker 1 17:41
Oh, it’s been so crazy, because, you know, I was really underground. So many years, I never even saw people. While I was doing this research. I live alone, I, you know, kind of I’m a workaholic. So I’ve just been working, working, working. It wasn’t until I showed my agent, the introduction, and she, you know, was floored by it. And she’s even she was like, this is important work. And you know, this is, and I so I had my editors, my agents is very excited about the material. But until I got it, until it’s, you know, now it’s out. The response has been overwhelming. I mean, I LA Times, compared it in scope and tone to Isabel Wilkerson forms of other songs. I was hoping to write an important book, but the response has been incredible and so grateful, because as you probably heard with author’s name, you just never know when you’re in it, if you don’t really understand how it’s going to be perceived. And even the best books don’t get this, you know, kind of attention. So, part partially I attribute some of it to Ron, I do my stepfather because he died when I was writing, right when I set out to start writing the book, and even though he had been telling me all these stories over the years that I was doing the research, what I literally sat down just start writing, he died and I was devastated. Because it kind of become my guardian during this process. And he was such a wealth of information and a window into this world that I was writing about any and all I can do that first week after he died was that there write his stories that I just cry and I just write and I tell my agents like I know I’m supposed to be writing a book now but and I had crazy deadline to complete the book. I said but all I can write a run stories. And then after that week, I thought, Oh my God, his stories are touchstones for every chapter, nearly every chapter in the book. Yes, yes. How do you not died? Right? I never would have put that together. I probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing that. It just wouldn’t have send something I would have done. And so I think he was the biggest gift in making it a more personalized story.

Bob Smith 20:06
Yeah, because you do insert run every so often. And it really does give a human touch a human feel to the whole story. So because he was so guarded for a long time, you probably felt a little bit of an obligation to be a little guarded for him. But then when he was gone, he were freed from that obligation and let you just write what a wonderful catharsis it was for you doing this and also a great gift for the book as well.

Speaker 1 20:32
Thank you. I think that human touch really brings his book out of just a traditional mystery book. Oh, yeah. And I think it makes it more accessible to the masses. So yeah, I guess it all worked out. I couldn’t have planned it that way.

Bob Smith 20:50
The best things happen that way, I think. But you’re right, the New York Times called a groundbreaking. Let’s see, I’ve got a number of the different quotes from people moving needed history book form, said the library journal called it essential, and I think it is. I’m sure there are many people, white people, particularly who are totally, totally unaware of the problems. And you mentioned that a lot of your white liberal friends were like, How can this be happening? And you’re going, Look, I’m uncovering it. It’s been happening over and over, in one form or another? What was the greatest obstacle you feel you faced in telling the story? And maybe it’s the organization because you talked about that a little bit? And I did want to delve into that. How did you do your research? And how did you organize all this stuff? You mentioned notecards? Yeah,

Speaker 1 21:33
I was, I rented this big loft, and they had a pool table, condo owner, pool table, and I thought they were gonna move it when I moved in. And they didn’t. And I was kind of flustered, I was like, really, by move the pool table in the corner of the room is still a big loss. And I had plenty of space. But all of a sudden, I realized once I really got into writing, where was this narrative thread of brawn? There was me on the road. There was obviously the green book, and there was historical research. There were all these narrative threads. And, and I thought, Oh, my God, I have to color code all this, I had no cards, and they were all color coded. And I could lay them all out on this pool table, which was a godsend, because then I could really see what was happening. And then I could see, oh, I need more GreenBook here, I don’t mention we’re on here, you know, where can I and there’s a lot of quotes and other people that I’m, you know, other oral history interviews and things like that, that were also they’re also threaded through the book. So it really helped organize the book. And in a really practical way, the biggest challenge was layering the present onto this history. So it makes sense that, you know, again, the pendulum metaphor, so that this wasn’t just a time time capsule, something happened in the past. And how was I going to get from that story to mass incarceration, which is, I think, the civil rights crisis of our time now. And so it was a big, you know, in some ways, to me, it felt so central, when you’re looking at Black, social, physical mobility, right? And how much more immobilized can you be if, you know, be it by being in jail? Right? All those things that we look back on and saying, Oh, how could we have horrible, you know, thank God, we don’t have that society anymore. And yet, the irony of today saying that when we’ve got nearly a third of our black young men in jail,

Bob Smith 23:36
yes, you mentioned that there are more people incarcerated in a prison system than were in slavery in 1850. Fascinating. It’s, it’s been something,

Speaker 1 23:44
it’s something that’s been happening under our noses in the last like, 30 or 40 years, especially my white liberal friends would call me and just in tears and saying, they’re gonna lock up all the Muslims, you know, we’ve got to do something. And I said, you know, they’ve been locking up black bolts for the last 50 years, mostly in the last 30 years since the Clinton crime bill. And yet nobody has called me in tears about that. Nobody seems to be alarmed about that. And it’s not that people American don’t care about black folks. But we have gotten really good at ignoring the pain and trauma of black people. You know, it’s like, oh, yeah, there’s that issue that we’ve never dealt with. But to me, when you see other marginalized communities, whether it’s transgender people or, you know, Latino people being rounded up, or being separated from their children at the border, this has been happening to us as black folks, yet there’s no outrage around it. So it was really important to me, you know, for the book, to see it for what it clearly is. And if we want to say we live in a free and fair society, we have to deal with it. What America aspires to be in what it is, are completely two different things. Well, I

Bob Smith 25:00
have to tell you candidacy and I’m a white person. I remember as a youngster going through the South in the early 60s and seeing all those whites only signs on the restrooms and on Jenner drinking fountains. That’s what I remember as a little kid, and thinking, Oh, my God, this is horrible. And then the Civil Rights Act actually was signed into law when we were down there on vacation one summer, what was at 64 effect. And that struck me what I was seeing all around there. And then of course, I grew up thinking, well, things have gotten better, like most white people do. And you brought up the subject of mass incarceration early in the book. And I thought, Now, how does this fit in? But you made me see it, you made me see it with the context of everything else in the book. So

Speaker 1 25:40
that was my biggest fear. Honestly, that really was the biggest challenge of writing the book, I thought, people are gonna say, What does mass incarceration have to do with?

Bob Smith 25:48
Yeah, it could be a turn off, right? You think? Very much so. And, you know, maybe it will be for some people. But for me, I got the book to read about the green book, and I got so much more with it than I ever counted on.

Speaker 1 26:03
Well, it means a lot to me. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Because it is a, you know, again, when you’re sitting there writing, especially by yourself, even with good editors, you still just until you kind of come up for air, you’re kind of wondering, you know, Is that making sense? Are people really getting it. And so I feel like it’s, it’s striking a chord. And I think it’s, you know, again, I attribute some of it to this kind of experience with Ron. And also, you know, the last the book ends with my mom, and I’m in the front seat of the car with her. In the seven days, at the age of seven, the same age that Ron was looking at a changing of prisoners, and Texas and the sugarcane field. And I asked my mom, because I, you know, I said, Mom, I thought slavery was over. And she says, Honey, why are all these men trained up in the field? And she thought they’re their prisoners. So why are they all black? Because it was just like, you know, I been in school that day. And it looked like the images of black folks in the field work in the field displays. That’s exactly what it looked like to me. At seven years old, I could not see the difference. And she said, they’re prisoners like a wider black, and she could not explain institutional racism to me. I don’t know if she even understood it at that time. Or she could explain it to me in a way that made sense that at that age, I knew something was wrong. But this is not right. Like these men are chained up. And it just looked crazy to me. And that was in the 70s. And that was when we had a banquet. Me Bryan Stevenson’s work. He’s done incredible work around this. He’s another big hero of mine. But you know, I think there were about 700,000 people in jail then. And now we have like 2.3 million, I think, maybe went down to 2.2 million. Now, yeah,

Bob Smith 28:04
that’s a great, that’s a great Coda on the end of your book that that moment with your mother and I had a similar experience in that trip to the South. I remember the first time we went south, we stopped in a place and of course, they had civil war hats. It was 1960. It was the centennial of the Civil War. So of course, I bought a union hat because I was from the north. And I remember looking at all of these stars and bars and the southern uniforms, and I thought, Well, isn’t that wrong? Didn’t they lose where the trader’s as a eight year old nine year old kid, I was thinking that same kind of thought you had. And that never came back to me until Charlottesville and all of these things that have occurred in the south with the Confederate flag, Confederate monuments, but early on, it didn’t seem right to me to see every town you came into. There’s a Robert E. Lee are some of these other people on these great granite horses and so forth.

Speaker 1 29:02
Jessica Simpkins I worried about her the chapter on women in the green book. And she’s, she’s a civil rights activist from South Carolina. And she said, you know, they’re waving that rag up on the state building their strong revenue, federal flag, which is like, they wave that rag up there. She’s like, but you know, I never fought to have it taken down. Because I always wanted to remember who was inside.

Bob Smith 29:27
That’s a great, that’s a great quote.

Speaker 1 29:30
Yeah. And that’s the point. It’s like, as much as we fight about this symbol. It doesn’t matter if the policies are still the same. You know, and so that’s the thing America is so blinded by symbolism. And that’s what the Civil Rights Act was. It’s like we sign this act to end racial discrimination. And yet, we didn’t do that. When there’s still forms of redlining going on. Now. You’re

Bob Smith 29:56
listening to an interview with Ken Desi Taylor, author of overground railroad, the Green Book and the roots of black travel in America. We’ll be right back. We continue with Ken Desi Taylor, the author of the book overground railroad, the Green Book and the roots of black travel in America, I got

Speaker 1 30:15
a grant from the National Geographics to develop a digital interactive map that really traces black social mobility. And it really kind of picks up where the book leads off, in regards to looking at the last 100 years in terms of how, you know, mapping renting sites, to private prisons, to Green books, I do all the socio economic markers of you know, poverty, environmental racism, whether it’s led, you know, because green book sites would clustered in these traditional black neighborhoods. And so what happened there, you know, in terms of racial disparities, and, and in terms of life expectancy, all of those things, and this map will show, you know, we’ll see, but I mean, I’m also I’m looking at where some of the sundown towns are also on the map, the sun downtown and Illinois. Now, that’s still predominantly all, white, has a small percentage of black and brown folks. But when you look closer, they’re all in their private prison. That’s

Bob Smith 31:24
right, they’re into prison and in the city gets political benefits from that, because they’re counted as part of the population. Exactly.

Speaker 1 31:32
They get legislative perks and benefits for that. And to me, you know, this is where it is so insidious. And it is so relentless, and just as the Confederates refuse to secede, that’s what this is. And I think that, you know, until we really understand, this would never happen. Bryan Stevenson talks about this. Germany would never allow this to happen. They would have swastikas all over the place, or there would be no tolerance for it. That’s the point. We tolerated it, where we’re profiting off of it.

Bob Smith 32:09
That’s that’s the obvious comparison to me. Having been to Germany, you don’t see swastikas everywhere, the side that lost is gone. I have a couple other things I want to touch upon here. One thing I thought was fascinating when you look back at the publishers of the Green Book is remarkable that in an era where there were no electronic social media, they could build such an incredible social network. Basically, that’s what the Green Book is almost like the manifestation or personification of this social network. They developed with people all over the country telling them about well, this is a hotel you can go to safely to stay.

Speaker 1 32:45
Yeah, I mean, it was almost Black Twitter, right. I mean, I think the way that Victor Green handled, you know, I can’t we stillness, a little about him, it was really hard to get a bit under me some of his family members, but they still knew very little about him. But from what I could gather, and what I did learn about him. He was a, he was just right. He was at the right place at the right time for writing a need that was so necessary for millions of people. And I think it was just kind of its own groundswell that just, it just kind of caught on. But again, because he had so actually distribute selling the guide in their stations. And because he had in so hired to marketing executives, who were black,

Bob Smith 33:39
Jackson and Austin, that was fascinating. Yes, yeah,

Speaker 1 33:43
they were amazing, major players in spreading the word. And because he had all those postal workers, and there was word of mouth, so there were so many different. It was kind of a perfect storm of all these disparate elements that came together that really made the green book at the time, a household name. And then it’s amazing how it just kind of disappeared from our, from our history and so many people when I first started the project, so many black people had never heard of it. It was still nude, so I think it was the fact that the last one sold. The Schomburg I guess got the last it was at Southern ease. I don’t know what it was an auction, maybe a swan auction? Like something close to $30,000 Well, they’re so rare. Well,

Bob Smith 34:33
they were like phonebooks from for the people using them. It’s like a new Yellow Pages I don’t need last year so I would pitch it. And and I that’s kind of what they were, weren’t they they were kind of like Yellow Pages in terms of what they what they headed there. And so which became Exxon. I thought that was fascinating how they, and you trace that all the way back to John D. Rockefeller, his wife, Laura Spellman. Think of that for a moment. John D. Rockefeller. America’s first billionaire, the robber baron. He married Laura Spellman, a woman born in a house that was one of the stops on the Underground Railroad. A woman whose mother and father were longtime abolitionists, Spelman and Rockefeller married when she was a school teacher and he was a lowly bookkeeper, and her influence on her husband grew as his fortunes did. Eventually, the Rockefellers and their companies supported all kinds of efforts to empower black citizens, including the United Negro College Fund, and the endowment of Spelman College named for Laura and her parents, Spelman alumni includes a who’s who of African American women, novelist Alice Walker, children’s activist Marian Wright Edelman, and civil rights pioneer Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr. The Rockefellers were dedicated to civil rights. So understandably, they made sure their Standard Oil Company and it’s so service stations were black friendly institutions.

Speaker 1 35:59
I had to ask that question like, Why? Why did I folk care so much about black? Because Shell Station didn’t even serve black people. And so how is it that Exxon Mobil or so Standard Oil at the time, actually hired black people to franchise their own gas station? Yes, fascinating. And they hired black chemists. And they hired black people in every aspect of their organization. They hired these two black marketing executives. What was that about? And you’re right, I traced it to Rockefeller with married divorced Spelman white woman who grew up with a house and underground where her parents were fierce abolitionist, and huge supporters on the call. And I think, you know, we don’t know for sure, but my guess is, she was saying, this is serious. What are you doing? And he, he stepped up, they were incredible. And why can’t businesses do that today, I think the power of corporations, you know, can be really, really significant. This is where they can actually do some good.

Bob Smith 37:02
That is a great corporate story you told there. It’s a great object lesson of what you can do for good with your resources. And then

Speaker 1 37:11
you’ve come full circle, because now I have an exhibition with the portfolio that I’m curating. And ExxonMobil is our major sponsor. Tell me about that. It’s going to be opening June of 2020. At the National Civil Rights Museum, which is in Memphis, it’s where King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel, which was a green book site with the perfect opening venue, and it’s a 3500 square foot exhibit. It will travel the US for three years, with over 12 venues, ultimately, so every three months to travel to a new venue. And what will people see? Well, there’ll be, it’s called Negro moto screen book. So it’ll be about the Green Book. But also the sites that will be featured like Marie’s dude ranch, which was an incredible, the fact that there was a negro dude ranch is just incredible. Run by Pearl, Bailey and later years. We’ll also look at the original Pearl Bailey bought it later on. But there was a black couple who first were the originators of that there were from LA and they had this idea that they wanted to actually help wayward kids from LA there were so many different to ride horses and and there were two black Westerns that were filmed there and issue sorts of incredible rich history. So there’s things like Maurice dude ranch will be featured, also looking at the world that the automobile played, and basically building up you know, black culture and prioritizing, you know, giving black folks a middle class lifestyle. There will be so many there’ll be my photographs and my history of capturing this stories and actually being out there, but photographs and the preservation efforts that are underway. And bringing back some of these green book sites, the Hampton House will be featured from Miami, and showing the civil rights history and the struggle in ways it’s patterned after the book after my book.

Bob Smith 39:24
So that sounds like that’ll be wonderful. And

Speaker 1 39:29
ExxonMobil is our major sponsor, if they’re our national sponsor, wow, this exhibition and ExxonMobil was so gas stations. So,

Bob Smith 39:38
Sae SSOs, we remember from our youth Exactly. How many primary sources were you able to interview orally? I mean, how many of these people were still alive that had anything to do with a green book? Well, that

Speaker 1 39:50
was challenging. Obviously, I did get a grant from the Library of Congress to capture the storage of that Archie green fellowship. I’m sorry, that gave me thankfully the time and resources to do that, but, but I did find quite a few more than I thought I would. I mean, obviously the people who ran them are passed. But their sons and family members that are still running like, there was Don Loper from Lopers Tire Service, he’s still has his. It’s in St. Louis. He still has the automobile shop. There was Leah Chase, who was dooby dooby chases restaurant, she’s the head chef and her and her husband ran this green book site that legendary still operating, we lost Leah about a month after I interviewed her she was 96. So that was an incredible opportunity to interview her. And then there were people like when Jessica Simpkins is nice. On retread, well, who remembered her on so well. And there’s so many stories about MMA, Jessica, and videos and history that you can learn about MMA, Jessica, and she will be featured in in the exhibition, as well. But, you know, I think also putting a face to this history, and realizing how rare it is for any business to be still operating. Even five years after it started, I think, again, is a testament to the resiliency and the genius of you know, black business owners that that story of entrepreneurship. As you mentioned earlier, you know, it was like a yellow pages of black businesses. And most of the when you look today at how many black businesses there are compared to what there were. It’s an abysmal, it’s really sad. And, you know, the irony, the last chapter of the book, double edged sword of integration, really examined that reality of what happened when all of a sudden integration did happen when the bill was signed. And yet, now all those black folks who could only go to maybe do get chases are the dewdrop in New Orleans could all of a sudden go to the French Quarter because they weren’t allowed to go into the French Quarter before. And so of course, once that happens, you know, these, these places that it becomes landmarks and the community literally just start to disintegrate, and they just are abandoned. And these

Bob Smith 42:50
were the black, the black friendly businesses, right? They

Speaker 1 42:53
weren’t Yeah, they’re just people just, you know, rightfully so wanted to see other parts of America that they’ve been shut out of.

Bob Smith 43:01
But you point out that even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was passed, when Black diners went into a restaurant, they might be given a menu different than white people a menu with the same items, but higher prices.

Speaker 1 43:17
I mean, at every stage at every turn, yeah, we were shafted. I’m sorry, I don’t even I’ll say it, we were, you know, even in the face of the quality, it was never really equal. And there are some good stories, you know, we’re, we’re black people were thinking, oh, you know, I’m not going to they’re not there’s no vacancy sign, or, you know, they’re going to put that up as I’m walking towards the place, you know, all of those things that did happen, that we had lost faith. And there were some great stories where black folks were surprised at the generosity that they received on the road. But in most cases, or whatever reason, as a country, we have failed to really show up and do what we say we’re going to do for humans, you know, I just think it’s a basic human need to be treated with dignity and respect. And, and that’s not what always happened for us. But I do know that we really have to at least understand and know our history if we want to stop repeating it. And to me, I think it was a woman who was interviewed for the Hampton House, you know, with integration, she was like, we we got what we wanted, in terms of integration. But then we lost what we had, because we even won says integration was the worst thing that ever happened to us. Because not that we shouldn’t have integrated. But all of those things that made us forced us really, to have our own businesses. White people for the most part did leave us alone. because they were like, well, you’re doing that you’re saying over there, and we did it really well for ourselves and for, you know, within our community. And then once we started to assimilate into white spaces, that’s when it got very, you know, where we lost a lot of the a lot of the power and a lot of the progress we’ve made as black folks, you know, there was a turn for the worse in some way. So it’s a double edged sword.

Bob Smith 45:27
And the irony of that is also reflected in in many of the Green Book locations you went to which were black friendly businesses, many of them are in horribly dilapidated areas.

Unknown Speaker 45:39
Firstly, government policies, as Kansas

Bob Smith 45:42
says, that’s due to mostly government policies. We’re all familiar with the GI Bill, which offered housing and employment to World War Two veterans from 1944 to 1971, the government spent more than $100 billion on that project, and it’s often credited with creating the white middle class. But you’ll learn in Kansas, his book that unfortunately, most Black World War Two veterans didn’t benefit from most services, because the government left the allocation of funds to the States. One example she cites was in 1947, the Veterans Administration in Mississippi distributed 3229 loans with the GI Bill, only two black men were among the recipients. policies of the Federal Housing Administration also contributed to the problem. For years it graded communities based on their racial demographics, the areas where black people lived were marked red and labeled D a lower grade, so essentially FHA loans were off limits to most black people. And at the end of World War Two, most US banks routinely denied loans to black men. As Kansas explains not having access to bank loans meant most black veterans couldn’t take advantage of lower interest mortgages. So many black families were denied homes that provided financial security, retirement, and college tuition for three generations of white families. Taylor contends that’s part of the reason why today’s average white family has nearly 10 times the net worth of the average black family,

Speaker 1 47:16
black folks with money and means when they could live in white neighborhoods or neighborhoods that had, you know, or the suburbs or whatever, when they could move into those places. And not that they always could even after, you know, like I said, there’s forms of redlining going on right now. But for the most part, those who could leave did leave. And then you know, and it left us, you know, more concentrated forms of poverty. But then you have law and order, you know, where I’d have to the green book publication, you’ve got Nixon, putting His Law and Order policies into practice. And then Reaganism, the economics behind that, that really decimated black communities, then you’ve got cracks that came into the community. And then you have Bill Clinton’s crime bill that came into the community, it seems like every decade after the Green Books, these publication, it was assault after so after assault on these communities, and now you’ve got mass incarceration. And it is, it is unreal, I think, the level of poverty that I’ve that I saw, when I got off the freeways, and really went to these communities that once housed dozens of Green Book sides. And then you had urban renewal that wiped a lot of them out with the freeways. That just, it decimated them. And the sad thing about it is when people of all races at different classes, who are middle to upper class will look at these communities and say, oh, you know, it’s just too bad that they can’t get off drugs or get a job or, or that it’s somehow their fault, that these neighborhoods are right that and it’s not, it’s policy that we put into place that we continue to support that have made this happen. And I think it’s I think it’s an equal responsibility of Americans and government to fix this mess that

Bob Smith 49:21
we’ve made. Honestly, you’ve, you’ve given so much support for all that with all the things that you tell in your book, and you’re not heavy handed in your book at all on any of the things you’re talking about. Like right now. Our guest is Ken Desi Taylor, the author of overground railroad, the Green Book and the roots of black travel in America. We’ll be back with more in just a moment. We continue now with author Ken Desi Taylor on the off ramp with Bob Smith. One story I do want to get in here. Your stepfather always liked to travel at night and that frustrated you and you didn’t understand until later why he did that?

Speaker 1 49:57
Yeah, it’s Dr. Nick crazy because I thought, you know, because he was with my mother. And I thought, why are you putting my mother’s life at risk, your own life at risk and drive all night, because she would have to stay up and make sure he wasn’t falling asleep. And they would drive back to Memphis, Tennessee to his hometown. And he would leave in the middle of the night. And I never understood why, you know, and he always said, Oh, traffic, that was his answer. You know, I don’t want to deal with traffic. And I felt like it was just reckless and unnecessary to put yourself in that kind of position. And it wasn’t until I started writing the book that I realized it was a lot easier, he would not be pulled over harassed is a very dark skinned black man driving during the day. And he was a man in law enforcement. Yes, you know, so, you know, driving at night was safer for him

Bob Smith 50:51
driving at night, you were invisible,

Speaker 1 50:54
invisible. And it never, he never said divorced me. But again, it wasn’t until I started writing the book that it just the light bulb went off. And I was like, Oh, my God, or even another one. When I, every time I go to his house, I’d be at their house and I’d be leaving to get on a plane, you try and load me up with food. I’d be like, well, I can just pick up something at the airport. And I realized, again, later after he died, I thought that was a very privileged statement for me to just assume, because even though he intellectually knew that was true, these were old patterns that were just ingrained in him like you don’t leave the house and go on a trip without food,

Bob Smith 51:34
right? They had to get served, you didn’t know where you were going where you’d get served. So black people on their trips would load up with food and thermoses and everything to make sure they didn’t have to stop anywhere to eat. You discovered multiple strategies people had, who were black travelers that seemed to be so strange, but when you when you finally put them in that context, you understood.

Speaker 1 51:55
Yeah, yeah. And that’s what I wanted to share in the book, I really wanted it to be, you know, like a discovery of something that is right under our noses that you know, you just until you really put those things together, it starts to make sense. And I’m glad that you found it really easy to read. I mean, that was a real another, you know, hurdle. I have a master’s degree in visual criticism, trying to take deeper theoretical concepts that make them very simple to understand. So I guess my student loans are worth it.

Bob Smith 52:28
You did great. I tell you, I always tell my wife, one of my favorite history books of all time is Robert, one of Robert Carroll’s books on LBJ. And I said, I picked up this book because I thought it would be interesting. And I said, this is one of the best history books I think I’ve ever read about America, because I learned so much. I didn’t know. And I would highly recommend it to anybody who thinks they love history and think they probably know a lot about history. Unless you look at it through different eyes, you really don’t know it. And and it may be it’s not just a black thing. It’s just eyes of other people, people who are different looking than the predominant race. That’s it makes a big difference. Well, thank you so much. It’s just wonderful to be able to talk to you. Thank you. Hope you have safe travels and the best of luck to you. Thank you. Thanks. Take care. Okay, you too. Bye bye. Bye. Can Desi Taylor, author of overground railroad, the Green Book and the roots of black travel in America? It’s an amazingly great story. Highly recommended. My thanks to Boswell books in Milwaukee for helping make this interview happen. Well, that’s our show for today. Hope you join us next time when we return with more on the off ramp with Bob Smith.

The off ramp with Bob Smith is produced in association with CPL radio and the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai