The year's 1954 and you're black.

Segregation is law in the South and basically practiced everywhere else in America.

You're traveling down the famed Route 66 and you've just reached

Albuquerque, New Mexico for the first time.

There's not another town for miles and you want to pull over and sleep for the night.

There are over a hundred motels to choose from, but less than eight will

take you in.

Picking the wrong one could lead to a humiliating encounter or worse,

a violent one, but there was actually a way to know where you'd be welcome.

It was in the Green Book.

Americans fell in love with the idea of the road trip in the mid-20th century.

A growing middle class meant more people had cars and jobs with paid vacation time.

And a newly built interstate highway system meant the country was

accessible to a big part of the population for the first time.

The open road indicated freedom and traveling by car reflected Americans' image of

themselves: self-sufficient, curious, and spontaneous.

It was a way for families to

spend time together and see the expansive country they called home, to

experience America's cultural and natural diversity.

Through the 1950s and

'60s, the highway became the most common way for American families to travel.

Motels and roadside attractions sprang up along the highway to accommodate

travelers needing a place to sleep or eat at any point on their journey.

But that freedom didn't extend to all Americans.

Black motorists were turned

away from the roadside hotels, gas stations, and restaurants that had taken

over the American landscape.

Some places were so hostile that it was unsafe to

even get out of a car.

Sundown towns forcibly expelled African Americans at night,

sometimes violently.

Black families had to take prepared food, in case they

wouldn't find a restaurant that would serve them, extra gallons of gasoline in

case filling stations wouldn't sell to them, and even empty coffee tins in case

they couldn't access a bathroom.

They carried blankets and pillows knowing

that finding a safe place to sleep could mean camping by the roadside or driving

long hours into the night, even though they had money to pay for a hotel.

Sometimes, that distance was fatal.

It was the exact opposite of the spontaneous

American road trip.

But thanks to a Harlem postal-worker-turned-travel agent,

knowing where to go wasn't a total shot in the dark.

In 1936 Victor Hugo Greene collected information on hotels, restaurants, beauty salons, and

mechanic shops that would reliably serve African Americans in New York City.

He called his Travel Guide "The Negro Motorist Green-Book" and began publishing

an updated version each year,

using his network at the United States Postal Service,

which was one of the largest single employers of African Americans at

the time.

Green put together detailed information on businesses and private

homes that would welcome black travelers.

The Green Book eventually grew to cover

locations in all 50 States and sold ad space to businesses all over the country.

With the help of Esso, now ExxonMobil, as a progressive corporate partner and

distributor of the guides, around 15,000 copies of the Green Book started selling

each year.

Victor Greene's once-16-page booklet ballooned

to over a hundred pages and became a stable item for black families who

wanted to participate in the joy of cross-country travel.

And it turns out

that iconic image of the open road, of freedom and family values, would become

an anchor in the Civil Rights movement.

Dr. Martin Luther King even mentions it

in his "I have a dream" speech.

The Civil Rights Act ended legal segregation

in 1964 and just two years later the Green Book went out of print.

It had become obsolete.

And as the road cut through the broad plains, you felt the

tremendous space all around you. A country rolling out to the horizon,

and you rolling with it.

It was beautiful and you sort of sensed the real meaning behind

the word "freedom".