Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

Back in the 1930s, traveling the nation's highways, if you were black, was fraught with peril.

Stopping at the wrong roadside diner could lead to discrimination.

Running out of gas on a highway

could lead to an encounter with the Ku Klux Klan. Making a bad turn into sundown town,

where African Americans were not permitted after dark, could lead to a lynching. Some of those

towns constructed signs at their borders warning, don't let the sun go

down on you, accompanied by a racial slur. In other words, a short trip down the road could be a death

mission. But one unique travel guide offered a way to sidestep that danger and humiliation, listing

hotels and businesses from New York City to Birmingham, Alabama that were friendly to black

patrons.

It was called the Negro Motorist Green Book, and for 30 years it helped keep black travelers safe.

A key artifact of the African-American experience, the guide is making a reappearance of sorts

in a new movie titled Green Book, which depicts Don Shirley, the late Jamaican jazz pianist,

being driven by a white chauffeur on a concert road trip through segregated America.

In the film, before they hit the road, someone slips the driver a green book,

explaining that black people can't stay everywhere,

and that the guide might help them find accommodations.

The man behind the guidebook was named Victor Green. He was a postal worker who lived in Harlem

with his wife Alma and he set out to write the book after being subjected to discrimination during a car

trip. Just what you have been looking for, he wrote in promoting his guide. Now we can travel without

embarrassment. The first version of the guidebook was published in 1936 and documented safe places in metropolitan New York.

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