This is the memory palace. I'm Nate Demet.

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. Topcoat. Pocket Square.

Fedora had a jaunty angle.

She's got her hair done.

Wavelet curls beneath her Sunday best hat.

The couple pictured there on the cover of the 1948 edition of the Negro Motorist Green Book

were the very picture of a particular kind of African American aspiration at mid-century.

In somewhere in those suitcases or in her clutch or in the glove box in the big old dash of their Pontiac or their Packard

is a book, a slim paperback, 30, 40 pages, a guide for African American travelers

specifically for the lucky, the rare few who own to carve back then.

And 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 that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments,

and other understatements.

The couple will use it to navigate the post-war, free highway United States

...