The couple on the cover are ready for the road. He's square-jawed and strapping. She's pretty, smiling wide. He carries both of their suitcases because it's 1948 and he's a gentleman and he's dressed like one: top coat, pocket square, fedora at a jaunty angle. She's got her hair done: wavelet curls under her best hate. The couple there, pictured on the cover of the 1948 edition of the Negro Motorist Green-Book are the very picture of a very particular kind of African American aspiration at mid-century.
Somewhere in those suitcases or in her clutch or in the glove box in the big old dash of their Pontiacc or their Packard is a book. A slim paperback, 30 or 40 pages. A guide for African American travelers, specifically for the lucky, the rare few who owned a car back then. There they are on the cover, this handsome couple, drawn in black and white, walking off from their suburban home to look for America.
Comforted by that guidebook, published each year since 1936 by the Victor E. Green Company of Harlem. "In order to give," it says, "the Negro traveler information to keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments, and other under statements." The couple will use it to navigate the post-war, pre-highway United States. To keep themselves safe and alive in their own car, free from the cruelties of segregated public transportation, of colored-only waiting rooms, of backs of buses. They'll be in the front seat of their own car, with their own gas pedal, their own steering wheel, on the open road, with the radio on, searching for their song, their music, in the open air.
They might catch a voice coming through the static. A rhythm carried on invisible waves from some rooftop transmitter in Decatur or Memphis, falling away as some skyline disappears in the rear view. Then coming in clear and strong now as they come out of the trees, as the road rises through the Alleghenies, or as they round a bend and the air comes warmly through the windows and across their arms. The light is warm and tangerine, flashing on the surface of the Snake River or the Nishnabotna or the Loxahatchee. Driving off to who knows: the Grand Tetons, Liberty Hall, the Finger Lakes, Beale Street, Painted Desert, in their own car.
Somewhere, right then, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty were on the road. Somewhere, right then, an Ad Man was showing an executive a pitch that would put a car in every garage. Some auto company lobbyist was showing some senator just where the freeways would run one day, through which unwanted neighborhoods. telling him how these freeways would free us all. How we'd road-trip and see the USA in our Chevrolet. Looking for adventure in whatever comes out way.
Milwaukee to Minneapolis in 4 and a half hours. Coast to coast in 4 and a half days. A nation transformed. A people on the move. It's great cities, it's natural wonders, it's amber waves, it's purple majesty all within reach. Unlimited possibilities on the open road, where the couple on the cover could just drive right then, as the song hung low, as their stations started to fuzz at the edges.
The book said they could go to Oakland, stay at The Warren Hotel on 6th, eat at the Crescent in Frederick, Maryland. See the Grand Canyon. Get a drink at Gil's Grill in Elizabethtown. But they shouldn't stop in Shelby, Montana - there were no negroes there. They should probably say they're delivering the car to it's white owners if they get pulled over outside Lafayette. They should steer clear of whole cities altogether, the Sundown Towns, that were all white, by law, by nightfall.
"There will be a day," The Negro Motorist Green-Book says, "in the near future, when it won't have to be published." But until that time, there was the book and the couple there in their car.
As the sun goes down and the road stretches out, summer bugs flash white in the headlights, and the signal fades, probably out for good this time - they hope the gas holds out 'til Topeka. "There's a place called Powers," the Green Book says. "They can get service there." Then they should be able to make it to Wichita. They packed enough food and wouldn't have to risk stopping to eat.
"It might be better to just stay in Topeka when we get there."
"The book says there's a hotel there where we'll be OK."
"It might just be better to play it safe."
And they drove on and the moon rose over an open field.
http://thememorypalace.us/2016/05/open-road/
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