A once valuable resource for black travelers is now the subject of an exhibit in Washington, D.C.

NewsHour Communities Correspondent Gabrielle Hayes has the story, part of our ongoing series, Race Matters.

Those were all in the Green Book.

The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide for African Americans first published in 1936,

was a valued resource at a time when travel held the promise of adventure, but was also perilous.

It is now the subject of an exhibit here at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C.

Kandasi Taylor, who wrote Overground Railroad,

The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America,

helped pull the exhibit together with the Smithsonian Institution

Traveling Exhibition Service and the DC Public Library System.

The exhibit tells the history of the guide,

named after its creators, Victor Hugo Green,

and his wife Alma. We wanted to show people who were living their best lives in spite of what

was happening around them. It served as a catalog of hotels, restaurants and other businesses

that would serve black people when racial segregation was legal.

It was published annually until 1967.

At the exhibit center, a compass.

It helps kind of orient you in this place because, again, it wasn't just the South that had racism.

Jim Crow had no borders.

Sundown towns communities that excluded non-white residents by law intimidation or violence

after dark were especially dangerous. For black Americans who used it they're going the wrong

direction could mean life or death. Some sundown towns had a bell

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