This wasnt a history that you could find. Betty at first was surprised there was such a thing as a black marine. You dont believe it, ask a tuskegee airman. Hell tell you. Victor green was a mailman for 40 years, lived in harlem, lived right across the street from duke ellington. Victor green was a man with a seventh grade education yet he put together a publication that touched all aspects of life. My parents liked to travel. They figured that was helpful for our education. The thing was, finding the black section of town and you used the green book to find places to eat so i always knew that we couldnt stay places. Mr. Green was distinguished and even as a child, a very lovely man, and i would say it was unusual to have a black client working with a white printer. The green book, my dad found what was the first place that he could stay between new orleans and the end of the drive for that first day. And the next day we drove all the way to miami and we stayed at the Lord Calvert Hotel which was listed in the green book also. Esso station had these books in a rack outside the pump and so i picked up one and found crosbys hotel in pensacola, florida. My parents owned the first fully accredited africanamerican owned travel agency in the United States. They were able to convince people over time and it took many groups and eventually ended up taking thousands of people abroad. He described the fighting and the dogs being sicced on them and people who had died to fight for the right for us to stay anywhere. So its now my absolute pleasure to introduce tonights special guest. Calvin ramsey is an author, photographer and playwright whose works have been shown all around the country. With the objective of shedding light on the overlooked and sometimes missing pages of african manner history, ramseys plays stimulate, educate and bring the audience closer to truth in american history. His first play, the green book had its premiere at atlantas theatrical outfit. It won recognition as a finalist in the Twelfth Annual last frontier theater Conference Held in valdez, alaska, where it was positively critiqued by prominent playwrights, actors and directors including edward albee and patricia neal. This success was followed by other critically acclaimed looks, including ramseys exploration of the complex career of the gifted africanamerican actor and civil rights activist. He has also served on the Advisory Board of special collections at Emory Universitys Woodruff Library in atlanta and he is a proud recipient of the dr. Martin luther king jr. Drum major for justice award. Please help me in welcoming Calvin Ramsey to the stage. [ applause ] well, good afternoon. Glad to see youre all out tonight. Im a new person, new transplant here in new york city. I have been here two and a half years and live right across yankee stadium. I really love being in new york. Part of my reason for coming to new york was because of victor green. Victor hugo green, the mailman who started the green book. How many of you have relatives, grandparents that were born in another country . Okay. Well, you kind of have a migration story as well. In the Africanamerican Community we had over six Million People from 1915 to 1970 that sort of got on the road to look for a better life for themselves and their families and they called it the great migration. Jacob lawrence did a whole 60panel exhibit on this that was here last summer at moma and i had the good fortune of being able to go in there and film all 60 panels. But what the green back was about, is about, is about traveling with dignity, being on the road, being able to stop, eat, use the restroom and just feel safe without humiliation, without threats of violence or even death, and victor green, who had a seventh grade education, lived in harlem, but he worked in hackensack, new jersey as a letter carrier. He started working in 1913. In 1918, he got married to a woman from richmond, virginia named elma duke and they moved back to harlem. 938 st. Nicholas avenue. 20 years later he started the green book. He would take her home during the summer to visit her family in virginia and thats when he ran into difficulties on the open road. Victor green had a jewish friend who told him about their troubles traveling and said they have their own travel book. So victor green got the idea from his friend and he started this green book. But he couldnt do it alone. He had very little resources. He was a fulltime letter carrier but what he had was an army of letter carriers all over the United States, mostly men then. There were some women but mostly africanamerican men. These were the guys that would go out and get addresses and places of business, places where people could just frequent while they were on the open road. They sent those things in to him and thats how the green book actually started. From that point on, it just grew and grew. The first year he did the green book it was just for new york. Just like other parts of the country, there was jim crow in new york as well. After new york, he was able to expand it to other parts of the country. And he kept the book going from 1936 to 1964 and his dream was one day to go out of business. He wanted to have it so that african mes africanamericans would have accommodations on the open road. That was his dream. He didnt live to see that. He died in 1960. His wife kept it going for four more years. He retired from the Postal Service in 1952. Then he worked on the green book fulltime. But when he started on the green back when he started in the Postal Service in 1913, he was able to join a union, the National Association of letter carriers which was a white union, which is a well, its a union now still, but back then it was predominantly white. Somehow or other he got into this union in hackensack and from that, he still couldnt use his members to get him information, and that same year, 1913, a group of africanamerican men in lookout mountain, tennessee, mostly railway mail clerks, one of the men was john wesley dobbs. He was a mason. He was also the grandfather of the first mayor of atlanta. So in 1913, this union started and victor green and this union become partners. This is his male force. These were his pied pipers. Just like today, the mail carrier in your neighborhood knows more about you than probably anybody else in your neighborhood. He knows whos in trouble and who might be getting in trouble and all of that. So these guys and mostly guys then, knew that. They knew what to ask and not to ask. The africanamerican women played a major role in this because back then most of the men were working and they were homemakers. The women were a lot of times at home working and the mailmen would ask them, would they mind being in this book. If you look in the green book, you will see that the address was always mrs. So and so. It was never mr. Lewis or mr. Brown or mr. White or anything like that. It was always mrs. Because the women took this on themselves to make sure that these listings were listed. They were called tourist homes. Most of these small towns did not have negro motels. Some of the negro motels just werent suitable for families. They really were for railroad workers, traveling salesmen and just single guys on the road. They just werent suitable for families to stay there, a lot of them. But these tourist homes were just regular homes. There were no phone numbers in the green book. You would just pull up, knock on the door and say were traveling, need a place to stay. Some folks would charge a little bit, some folks wouldnt charge anything. Most people would leave some money under the pillow or on the dresser to show their gratitude. This went on and on. Then later on, victor green had the good fortune of coming in contact with a gentleman named billboard jackson, who was an educated black man who had worked in the Commerce Department under hoover, and he was also probusiness. He was all about black business. This guy was really a mover and a shaker. I talked to Wynton Marsalis father ellis a few years ago in new orleans. His father had a tenroom motel, a service station and a taxicab stand. He wasnt a musician. The music part of the family comes from the mothers side. The father was a business guy. He had an esso service station called billboard esso. He thought so much of billboard jackson he named his esso station after billboard. Billboard went out and got black men trained to run these stations all over the United States and these stations advertised in the green book. So a lot of folks would ask why would rockefeller, because esso is owned by standard oil, owned by john d. Rockefeller senior, and the question was why would john d. Rockefeller get involved with a program like this, was he trying just to corner the black market in travel, or did he have other reasons . Most people point to rockefellers wife. Her name was laura. She was from massachusetts originally but they had migrated to ohio. Her father was a congregational minister. Their home was part of the underground railroad. There were reports that troops stayed there many a nights talking to the children, spending the night. The familys last name was spelman. I guess some of you heard of the school in atlanta . Okay. Well, the school is named after rockefellers wifes family. If you go on that campus you will see a painting or photograph of the minister, minister spelman and his wife, and the church on campus is called sister chapel and i always thought it was called sister chapel because of all the sisters that were on campus. But its called sister chapel because of laura and lucy spelman. Once they got involved with the green book and the advertising and billboard jackson, 95 of the businesses in the green book were blackowned businesses that supported the green book and supported the travelers on the open road. I think we have another clip we are going to show of some of my interviews from the film. Where you from . Im from new york city, from manhattan, actually. My parents lived in harlem when i was born. When i was 1, i moved to queens and i grew up in queens. And your parents met yeah, my parents met in pratt, kansas, where my mother lived and my mother grew up. During world war ii, my father was stationed there. Thats when they met. My father went back to, you know, was sent to europe, to france, i think he was fighting, and when the war was over, they got married and moved to new york. Thats where you and your right. Thats where i was born. You mentioned it was Womans Hospital . Womans hospital which is no longer there, which was near columbia, where Columbia University is now. Like 116th and broadway. That area. Your family would go back south for holidays or summer vacations or weddings and funerals, things like that . Yeah. We would go south two or three times a year. We would go for thanksgiving, holidays, mainly. Thanksgiving, the summer, christmas and we would visit my mothers family in kansas as well. We had to drive. This is before interstate highways as well. Lot of twolane blacktop highways. Exactly. Had to go through the mountains in west virginia. How about food . Your mother would spend a lot of time cooking . We would take the shoebox with the fried chicken. What would she make . Potato salad goes bad really quick so you have to eat that first. Yeah. She definitely cooked. Potato pies . Potato pie . My mom wasnt a great cook, actually. On the way back, my grandmother would pack us up. We wouldnt get from salsbury to greensboro we would be in the pies eating them. Okay. Wow. So you remember when did you first become aware that accommodations on the road were not open to your family . I feel like i always knew it. My father used to take me, sometimes he would take me before my sister was born, my sisters three years younger than me, so i always knew that we couldnt stay places or we couldnt eat places. I dont remember i guess my mother packing the lunch. It was just and i traveled from the time i was like 2, i can remember from 2 on. And so the bathroom stops were really yeah, this is what you say, say yes, maam. You cant go in the bathroom, you cant, you know, dont do anything accidentally. So i was prepped. Once we get past d. C. The rules changed. You remember your father using the green book . I do remember him using the green book to find places to eat. The thing was find the black section of town and use the green book to find places to eat, and at other times when we traveled beyond, you know, my parents liked to travel so they figured that was helpful for our education, so at one point we took a trip from new york across country, like through the grand canyon to california and then down to mexico to acapulco. We went that far. Wow. Thats a real trip. We actually started out, we went all the way to florida. Thats when i remember him using the book, to find places to stay. Actually, that was the year they passed the civil rights act. 1964. Right. They must have i think they passed that in july. Yeah. And remember staying in those boarding rooming houses and at one place we stayed in florida, the owner begged my father to go stay in a hotel, a regular hotel, because they had he described the fighting and the dogs being sicced on them and people who had died to fight for the right for us to stay anywhere. Its really that whole trip was like a trip. We were the first blacks to go in those white hotels so it was, in texas we did that. I mean, people got up and left, the whole dining room went quiet. Its an emotional thing, that whole traveling thing with them. Especially for a young child. Yeah. So when the man would plead with your father to go stay at one of these hotels, your father sort of resisted. Right. My father was resentful of the fact that he couldnt stay in those hotels before and he was adamant that he was going to continue to support africanamerican, at that time negro establishment. He was like im not staying. They didnt want me then, im not going to go stay there now. Im not going to eat in their establishments, im not going to stay in their establishments. Im not going to patronnize themg them in any way. After the guy sat him down and told him the specific sacrifices that he had made, he was an older gentleman, and he said you know, i need your business but im begging you, you have the money, please go do it. My father did it and the rest of the trip we stayed in regular hotels. Wow. That is emotional. And you remember the first time you went into a regular hotel motel and checking in . You were small. I was small. We had gone to mexico and our experience in mexico was way different. We were welcomed. As a matter of fact, my father was a chatty guy and he ran into this man who let us stay in his penthouse in acapulco. We come back, great experience in mexico, wonderful time. As a matter of fact, the mexicans were talking about the americans, european americans and how they just get drunk, bad manners they had and they were like the gringos. We come across the border in texas, this i remember really clearly, we come across the border in texas, we stop in a hotel, we go into the dining room. We walked my mother had, you know, bows and had us really dressed up, looking our absolute best. We step into the dining room and silence. It was a big room. Silence. Everybody stopped talking, everybody turned and looked at us. It was terrifying. Yeah. And i mean, not smiling. Scowling. So some people got up and walked out of the dining room and we walked in, my parents, we sat down, they ordered the food and we ate. But it was not a fun memory. It was real scary to me. And very uncomfortable. Yeah. You mentioned one time you was driving in North Carolina and the sheriffs car passed you by, and turned around. Yes. I remember another incident where we were going to visit my fathers family in North Carolina. My grandmother, his uncle, before the interstate highways. There were two lane blacktop highways as you described them and we were it was at night. We were driving down the highway because it would take longer than it takes now to get there because you had to go through the mountains in west virginia. Anyway we were driving down the highway, the sheriff is coming towards us in the opposite direction. As we drive past, he makes a swift uturn. My father had a new buick, new york license plate and he was very conscious of the new york plates and in these small towns they know everybody in the town. When you come in the city limits, they know youre there. So anyway, they made a quick uturn. He gunned the motor to outrun them because we were afraid that if they stopped us they would kill him or harm us in some way. So we were in the car back crying. My mother was like hysterical that hes going to outrun these police which he did. He drove really fast, he cut off his lights and then took a side road really quickly. I guess we went around a curve, he took a side road and drove off that road down, you know, and we sat under a tree until the sun came up like hiding. Wow. We saw he saw their lights go past back and forth. They couldnt figure out where he was. Wow. It was really frightening. What year you think this was . Wow. What year was that. I was really young. 50s . Yeah, definitely in the 50s. Yeah. In the 50s. Yeah. I must have been my sister was born, maybe she was 3, 4. I was maybe 7. Yeah. Yeah. Im 66, so that was awhile ago. So stayed after daybreak. Did you go to sleep there . Sleep . No way. Afraid to go to sleep. Afraid. Wow. Wow. Wow. Then you just got back on the road . He creeped out. You know, after many hours that their lights, you know, stopped going back and forth, we creeped out. My mother was really upset. Yeah. But your father kept traveling after that, years in the future . He never stopped traveling . No, he didnt. He was a brave guy. Yeah, he was. You were brave, too. You could have said dad, i dont want to go . You never said that . No. Never said that. But you definitely remember he felt like he was a person with some of some stature with some rights. We had to manage but. He was a citizen. Yeah. He was a citizen. Exactly. The system was wrong, not him. Exactly. Wow. What was your fathers name . Richard. What was your mothers name . Betty. Shes alive. My mothers 90 something years old. She doesnt live here, though . No, shes in florida. They retired and moved to florida. She doesnt live here. Its a beautiful story. I think thats it. What did you think . That was amazing. I know. Well, thats paula. I didnt know paula. I was up in harlem. That was right across from the polo grounds on edgecomb avenue. Any of you familiar with edgecomb in the sugar hill