Traveling while Black: Morgan City home welcomed travelers in Jim Crow days

(Editor’s note: Wednesday will be observed as Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day in 1865 when enslaved people in the westernmost state of Texas learned that they were free. To mark the day, Greig Chauvin of Morgan City submitted this story about one of the challenges faced by African Americans in the segregated South.)

In 2019, a movie called “The Green Book” won the Oscar for Best Picture. It’s an excellent film based on the true story of a concert tour taken in 1962 by a Black pianist and his Italian American driver.

The driver is given a copy of “The Negro Motorist Green Book” before they embark on a journey through the segregated South.

In the 1930s, Victor Green was a mailman and World War I veteran living in Harlem. Like many middle-class Black people, he became frustrated with his own travel experiences and compiled “The Negro Motorist Green Book.” It listed hotels and restaurants, night clubs and grocery stores, beauty  parlors, and barber shops.

The Green Book began its annual publication in 1936 with a state by state and city by city listing of where Blacks could stay, where they could eat, and even where they could buy gas.

Many gas stations refused to serve Black customers. A Black man name James Billboard Jackson working as a sales representative for Esso convinced the company to become a sponsor of “The Green Book.”

Readers were then urged  to stop at Esso stations for gas. Esso has since become Exxon Mobil.

Black athletes, entertainers, construction workers, salesmen, teachers and even Black diplomats employed by the U.S. State Department were traveling the country during this time, and they discovered the problems of “traveling while Black.”

Along with hotels and motels, tourist homes were places to stay in the 1930s. Like today’s Airbnbs, these were private dwellings where a room could be  rented. Many of these tourist homes were run by women. “The Green Book” listed two tourist homes in Morgan City that were the homes of descendants of the Sumpter Williams family.

“There’s no place like home” says the inscription on this photo of the Williams family home at Greenwood and Federal that welcomed Black travelers. The other home was also run by a Mrs. Williams and was located at 208 Union St.

Although not listed, Raymond Clark’s hotel on Bowman Street was also available to Black travelers.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act finally outlawed racial discrimination in public places, and it was thought “The Green Book” had become obsolete. The 1966–67 International Edition called “Vacation Without Aggravation” was the last of these books to be published.

In the late 1960s, schools in St. Mary Parish became desegregated, but segregation was still prevalent in Louisiana. My three brothers played high school basketball with friends who were Black, and we experienced, to a very small degree, the issues that they faced at restaurants and businesses allowing “whites only.”

There were several incidents following games where the team and their families could not stop for a bite to eat because of the skin color of several team members. But they were a team, and if one or two were not allowed, the bus moved on to another location. It was all or nothing.

Victor Green predicted, “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal rights and privileges in the United States.”