Exhibition Opening: “The Negro Motorist Green Book”
During the era of Jim Crow laws, a time of segregation through policy and through custom, Victor Green, a Black postal carrier from Harlem, recognized a need and decided to fulfill it. Believed to be inspired by the earlier Jewish Vacation Guide, which cataloged hotels that welcomed Jewish travelers, Green published his own book: The Green Book, a travel and survival guide. The Green Book became “the Bible of Black travel” for over thirty years, offering critical (and often lifesaving) information and sanctuary.
Join us as we open Illinois Holocaust Museum’s newest special exhibition, The Negro Motorist Green Book, with a panel discussing the significance of The Green Book, the history of Black travel and sundown towns, and a myriad of related topics.
Panelists will include award-winning documentary filmmaker Yoruba Richen, whose Emmy-nominated film The Green Book: Guide to Freedom was broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel; Chicago Sun-Times columnist and WBEZ reporter Natalie Moore, whose book The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation won the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and Buzzfeed best nonfiction book of 2016; and kihana miraya ross, who teaches African American Studies at Northwestern, where she was awarded a grant by the Spencer Foundation to support her studies of reparations in Evanston. The panel will be moderated by Laura Washington, columnist, reporter, and ABC-7-Chicago Political Analyst, reporting on race, politics, and public affairs.
Reservations required.
On-Site tickets are sold out. On-Line tickets are still available.
The Negro Motorist Green Book was created by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in collaboration with Candacy Taylor and made possible through the generous support of Exxon Mobil Corporation.
Public programming for the exhibition supported by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
LOCALLY PRESENTED BY:
PRESENTING SPONSORS
Additional Funders
Katherine Gates
Golder Family Foundation
Mark and Lisa Pinsky
Community Partners: The Chicago Crusader; Chicago History Museum; Chicago State University Program in History and Africana Studies; The Links, Inc. North Shore Chapter; Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement, University of Illinois Chicago; Shorefront Legacy Center