How the ‘Green Book’ Shaped a Generation of Black Travelers
Women Who Travel | Condé Nast Traveler
Condé Nast Traveler
4.4 • 636 Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2020
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It was a different time in the summer of 2019 when Janée Woods Weber, an activist and social justice educator, joined BBC presenter Alvin Hall on a road trip tracing the legacy of the Green Book a travel guide published from 1937 to 1966 that shared safe road routes for Black travelers. But as this summer came around—dubbed the summer of road trips by many, but also filled with marches and social activism addressing police brutality and systemic racism—the duo's trip seemed all the more prescient. It's all gathered in their new podcast from Macmillan, Driving the Green Book, which follows the journeys Black travelers took to the South and the memories those who grew up in the Jim Crow Era have of the groundbreaking book. We sat down with Janée to hear about what went into planning the road trip last year, what stories from Black elders she met along the way have stuck with her, and which Black-owned businesses she can't wait to visit when we're able to travel freely again.
Read a full transcript of the episode: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-the-green-book-shaped-a-generation-of-black-travelers-women-who-travel
Read more about Driving the Green Book: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/driving-the-green-book-podcast
Listen to Janée's podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/driving-the-green-book/id1519839250
Follow Janée: @janeepwoods
Follow Lale: @lalehannah
Follow Meredith: @ohheytheremere
Follow Women Who Travel: @womenwhotravel
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everyone. This is Women Who Travel, a podcast from Connie Nass Traveler. I'm Meredith |
| 0:08.5 | Carrie, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Faliar Koglu. Hello. This week, we're focusing |
| 0:14.3 | on the Green Book, a travel guide published from 1937 to 1966 that gave a sense of safety and |
| 0:20.3 | preparation to black people traveling through |
| 0:22.2 | the U.S. Today's guest, Jenae Woods Weber, an activist and social justice educator, co-hosts a new |
| 0:28.2 | podcast called Driving the Green Book, which looks into the guidebook's legacy. Thanks so much for |
| 0:32.6 | joining us, Jenae. Thank you for having me. So before we get into all the fine details of this amazing trip that you took to create this podcast, |
| 0:42.3 | I wanted to kind of kick things off with asking you how long you'd wanted to explore the legacy of the Green Book for. |
| 0:49.3 | Was that something you've been working towards for a long time? |
| 0:53.3 | I first became very interested in exploring the Green Book something you've been working towards for a long time? |
| 0:58.0 | I first became very interested in exploring the Green Book when Alvin Hall, who is the other person involved with the podcast, |
| 1:03.7 | completed a radio series for the BBC about the Green Book. |
| 1:08.5 | And as he was working on that project and telling me about the Green Book, |
| 1:12.7 | of course, I became more and more interested. And then the movie came out, the Green Book movie, |
| 1:17.9 | which was The Toast of Hollywood. And my interest was piqued because I did not know about the |
| 1:25.3 | green book growing up. I am a black woman, but I had never heard of |
| 1:29.8 | the Green Book until I was well into adulthood. So the opportunity to learn this piece of |
| 1:35.6 | history that had been hidden away from me was a really exciting opportunity. And of course, |
| 1:43.0 | when Alvin invited me to join him on this |
| 1:45.2 | road trip, I had to say yes. And so talk us through a little bit what that planning was like |
| 1:50.2 | for that road trip. How did you go about starting to plot the route and all of the stops? |
| 1:56.8 | The road trip was inspired when Alvin saw the migration series by the revered black artist Jacob Lawrence at the Museum of Modern Art. |
... |
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