Page 86 →Intervening in Jim Crow

In July 1956, Miss O. J. Ragland of Oxford, North Carolina, was planning a visit to Florence, South Carolina, and wrote the following letter to the Florence Chamber of Commerce [misspellings were in the original text]:

Dear Sir:

I plann to be in Flornce during the week of July 30, 1956. I would like to know if there are any “first-class” Hotels for Negroes, and also the rates of the hotel or motel.

Looking to hear from you soon concerning this matter.

Yours truly,

(Miss) O. J. Ragland”

In response to her letter, Ragland received the following reply:

Dear Miss Ragland:

According to our city directory there are only two hotels for Negroes in Florence:

Alphonso’s Hotel, 257 N. Dargan Street

Lincoln Hotel, 130 S. Church Street

You will have to write the manager of the two hotels concerning rates.

This is in response to your July 19 inquiry.

Very truly,

(Miss) Beverly Brown

Office Assistant”¹

The plight of identifying, investigating, and locating acceptable accommodations in 1950s America was not unique to Black women such as O. J. Ragland. Although writing ahead to destinations was one way to make plans, it was nearly impossible for Black travelers to take a road trip with any kind of spontaneity, as they could not leave it up to chance that they would find safe overnight accommodations and the comforts of hospitality when traversing Page 87 →the Jim Crow–era landscape. Although the respondent, Beverly Brown, refers to the city directory in Florence, South Carolina, to answer Ragland’s query, we know that there were other resources available at that time; specifically, travel guides, designed for the very purpose of aiding Black Americans facing discrimination on the road. In this article, we focus on one such guide—The Negro Motorists Green Book (Green Book) published by US postal worker Victor Green from 1936 to 1966. To begin, we explicate the struggles that Black travelers faced during this period and then focus our discussion on the Green Book sites in Florence, South Carolina. In doing so, we demonstrate that the Green Book was a rhetorical force, a text that rejected and resisted racist practices and attitudes and instead helped to foster a culture of hospitality.

In a brochure published some time around 1956, the South Carolina State Development Board “invites you to spend your vacation leisurely and pleasurably in her state of gay and friendly people … in South Carolina you will find the finest in hotels, tourist courts, and tourist homes. Many ultramodern hotels have been built in recent years, and of course there are still the older hotels which have acquired reputations for fine hospitality and real Southern cooking.”² Although “fine hospitality” was promised, the reality was that this hospitality, this “Southern hospitality” was limited; when considered in terms of “true” or “unconditional” hospitality, it is, as American Studies scholar Andrew Szczesiul terms it, a “mythic hospitality.” Szczesiul explains that Southern hospitality is a fiction, “an essential, foundational narrative within the larger national project of southern exceptionalism—the persistent belief that the South is a distinct, unique, and separate culture with the larger United States.”³ Furthermore, it cannot be defined as “true” hospitality, because this welcome is not extended unconditionally. And although it can be argued that unconditional hospitality is near impossible to achieve, the conditions that limited Southern hospitality were real and problematic. In the Jim Crow South, in particular, white-owned businesses welcoming only other whites constituted a version of hospitality that was exclusionary; thus, it failed to be hospitable at all.⁴ Black travelers, as we will show, were often treated with hostility, and “were unwelcome strangers and aliens to this invented image of the South as a hospitable tourist destination.”⁵

Victor Green published the Green Book from 1936 to 1966 in an effort to, quite literally, extend the reach of hospitality nationwide so that Black travelers were included. Green’s travel guide listed, state by state and city by city, a variety of establishments—boarding houses, restaurants, gas stations, and hotels—that were hospitable to Black clients and often owned Page 88 →by Black businesspeople. The guide cost twenty-five cents in its first year of publication and was sold in locations such as Esso gas stations, a major company that hired Black executives and employed Black franchisees.⁶ What began as a sixteen-page pamphlet eventually grew into a 128-page book, and although there were other travel guides published specifically for Black travelers during this period, the Green Book was in print the longest.⁷ In the 1956 edition—the same year when Miss Ragland was inquiring about accommodations in Florence—Green states, “The White traveler has no difficulty in getting accommodations, but with the Negro traveler it has been different. He, before the advent of a Negro travel guide, had to depend on word of mouth, and many times accommodations were not available.”⁸ But perhaps a more bluntly worded phrasing of Green’s statement would be, “and many times accommodations were not available to the Black traveler.” For the white traveler, of course, there would have been no need to write to the Florence Chamber of Commerce and inquire about lodging; white accommodations were the default and always available. Only a year before Ragland’s inquiry, there existed thirty-nine boarding accommodations for whites in Florence as compared with eight boarding accommodations for Blacks. This included boarding houses, furnished rooms, hotels, motels, and tourist homes and courts.⁹ Furthermore, this same disproportionate ratio of white-to-Black accommodations is also found a year later in the 1957 Florence Business Directory.¹⁰

It seems fitting to have Florence as the focus for an article about hospitality, for the area is now home to over five thousand hotel rooms and is often colloquially referred to by residents as a “hospitality hub.” Florence’s relationship with the hospitality industry began in 1852 with the arrival of the railroad. As Florence grew in both population and influence, it adopted the titles of “magic city” and “Gate City to the South,” which contributed to its “rapid development” and “unprecedented prosperity.”¹¹ According to the website for the City of Florence, “by the 1870’s Florence had a population of about 700 but, due to ever-expanding railroad activity, an emerging middle class more than doubled the town’s population by the end of the decade.” The town was chartered in 1871, and in 1888, the new county of Florence was created from portions of Darlington, Marion and Williamsburg counties.¹²

Nationally, the golden age of the railroad began to decline during the mid-20th century, but transportation still played a vital role in the continued growth and development of Florence. Instead of rail, priority shifted toward the development of roads. Conveniently located midway between New York and Miami, as well as between Washington, DC, and Jacksonville, Florida, Page 89 →Florence became a popular stopover for tourists along Highway 301. Additionally, the arrival of two major interstates, I-95 in 1969 and I-20 in 1975, further bolstered Florence’s economy and lent way to the development of a “hospitality district” at the junction of these two interstates.

Within a city that has historically placed such an emphasis on tourism (and by extension, hospitality), little consideration was given to the Black traveler, as evidenced by the terse response given to Miss Ragland’s inquiry by Miss Brown at the Chamber of Commerce, and the incommensurate lodgings noted in the city directory. Unlike the mainstream hospitality industry of the Jim Crow era, the Green Book presented the opportunity for lived experiences of real, alternative hospitality for Black patrons, both those traveling through and those living in the Florence community. Rather than simply accepting poor treatment and fear, businesses that were listed in the Green Book, and the publishers themselves, were pushing back against a racist system that was inhospitable and treacherous. Although it is common to think about a text such as a travel guide as neutral or apolitical, the Green Book was a form of resistance, as much a part of the fight for civil rights as other texts published during this time.

The story of the Green Book begins with the story of the American auto industry. With the assembly line and the mass production of cars in 1913 came a boom in car ownership that changed travel in the United States. By 1967, there were nearly eighty million cars on the road. In terms of Black car owners, Gretchen Sorin, author of Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights, notes, “By the 1940s and 1950s, all of the studies indicated a significant increase in the number of Black American households with a car parked out front or in the driveway. One study estimated that 475,000 Black families owned at least one car, with half of these purchased new.”¹³ Not surprisingly, as cars became more affordable and more common, and more roads were built, there was also a proliferation in travel-related industries—gas stations, hotels, and restaurants popped up all along these new interstates as families went on vacation. The South, in particular, attempted to draw visitors looking for Southern hospitality and a taste of history, inviting them to a South that kept its Black citizens in the role of helper or servant in hotels and restaurants. Black customers in restaurants or guests in hotels did not fit within the “good ole’ Southern hospitality” narrative; therefore, they were not welcome. Although Black families owned automobiles and traveled on the same roads as their white counterparts, the businesses that constituted the hospitality industry were overwhelmingly not welcoming of the Black tourist. Even whites who were Page 90 →sympathetic to the plight of Blacks were often not welcome in establishments for their own race. G. L. Ivey, a tavern owner in Florence and president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), a political organization dedicated to maintaining segregation, made this message abundantly clear by hanging a sign overhead the dining room that read, “If You Are A Negro Sympathizer, Get Lost Fast!”¹⁴ Black travelers “were unwelcome strangers and aliens to this invented image of the South as a hospitable tourist destination.”¹⁵ Another example may be found in a speech (titled “The Human Factor”) given by James A. Rogers at a gathering of approximately seventy Florence community leaders at Litchfield Beach, South Carolina, in November of 1963. Rogers, the editor of the Florence Morning News, called for an open discussion of race issues and told the group a story about three Black visitors who were on a business trip to Florence: “They were here on a business trip to consider another investment which would be very beneficial to the city. While conferring on this business matter in the lobby of a local hotel, their presence was noted. Soon the rumor was widespread that the hotel where they had been seen had been integrated, and nasty anonymous telephone calls were reaching the hotel operator. Whether these men applied for rooms in any local hotel or motel, I am not certain, but they spent the night at the home of a local Negro.”¹⁶

In addition to the observable hostilities, Isabel Wilkerson, in her book The Warmth of Other Suns, notes that there was also an “invisible hand” that was at work from state to state and town to town. For example, in Calhoun City, Mississippi, there were “colored” and “white” parking spaces, yet they were unmarked—“it was just the work of the invisible hand.”¹⁷ At intersections, Black motorists were expected to let white motorists go first and were not permitted to pass even the slowest of cars if they were driven by white motorists.¹⁸ This invisible hand applied to pedestrians and even children, as well. For instance, in Florence in 1950, a white man named Ellis Snelling flogged a young Black girl named Mary Joe Washington, believing her to be the same girl who allegedly bumped into his daughter on the way to school.¹⁹ Historian Leon Litwack notes, “The ‘unwritten law’ in the rural South dictated that a white resident must be able to vouch for the character of all Negroes unknown to the mass of the community. That meant that a Black stranger could be stopped anywhere at any time and forced to state his business to the satisfaction of the white questioner; if the stranger provided the wrong answer or replied in a manner less than deferential, he or she was likely to be arrested or forcibly removed.”²⁰ Apparently, this may have been the case for one man in Florence in 1954. T. H. Miller, vice president of the local chapter of the NAAWP, allegedly antagonized a young Black cyclist by following him down the road and then started a fight with him over his riding of the bicycle.²¹

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Page 92 →Sundown towns—“all-white communities inside and outside the South that barred minorities after dark”—were also of grave concern and were avoided by Black travelers.²² Mark Foster recounts the experiences of Black travelers in his article “In the Face of ‘Jim Crow’: Prosperous Blacks and Vacations, Travel and Outdoor Leisure.” One tourist noted that “as the afternoon wears on, it casts a shadow of apprehension on our hearts and sours us a little.” The spontaneous detours and off-the-beaten-path excursions enjoyed by so many tourists were denied Black travelers, who were understandably worried about reaching safe overnight accommodations before nightfall.²³

In Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir, Karen Fields describes her family’s trips from Washington, DC, to Charleston in the 1920s as “voyages to another country where Black people were relegated to separate (although not always equal) spaces.”²⁴ The car, she notes, had to be “self-sufficient,” packed with food, lemonade, and even water for the radiator, if needed.²⁵ Fields writes:

Our parents made our “capsule” self-sufficient because we would make no pause for refreshment, not from the time we passed the whites-only Marriott Hotel, just across the Potomac, to the time we at last turned off U.S. 1 toward Charleston…. my father planned ahead where to stop for gas…. We could not break up the 550-mile trip in some scenic places to sleep in a roadside motel…. We carried detailed maps for the same reason that we carried so much food and drink: a determination to avoid insult, or worse. I remember the anxiety of my parents when we had to stop once, in the middle of a Southern nowhere, to change a flat tire.²⁶

In recounting traveling with his family in North Carolina, George Kenneth Butterfield Jr. testified to the agility required of Black travelers. As a family who traveled often, they knew how to find overnight accommodations in Southern towns where there were no hotels. On entering a town, they would “find a black community, and we would find the local boarding house and that’s where we would stay.”²⁷ He continues:

When you live in the South and have been in the South all your life, you could find [places to eat and sleep] instinctively…. Southern towns are laid out in the same fashion, basically, and you could use your senses Page 93 →and sense where you are and where you’re not. And if you keep driving, you can see the quality of the housing decreasing and blight setting in—abandoned cars and people hanging on the streets and then you can begin to see blacks. You know you are getting closer to the black community, and you can just go right in and find it. You may have to stop and ask someone: “Where’s the boarding house?” And you may be a block or two from it. It wasn’t hard to find. You can find it instinctively.²⁸

Despite these dangers and hassles, Black people in America wanted and needed to travel—to see the country, visit family, or travel for work. For some, public transportation was often the only option available; however, its use came with its own challenges. For instance, in February 1945, four Black women aboard a train en route to Florence were arrested after a dispute over seating arrangements within the coach.²⁹ Even famous Black Americans such as renowned writer W. E. B. Du Bois; Clarence Mitchell, director of the Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); and pop singer Jackie Wilson were not exempt from unequal treatment when traveling. In 1929, Sarah “Sadie” Harrison, the Secretary of the New London, Connecticut, chapter of the Negro Urban League received a letter from Du Bois asking for a recommendation for a “colored boarding house” for an upcoming trip.³⁰ In 1956, Clarence Mitchell and Reverend Horace Sharper were both arrested, also at the train station in Florence, for entering the “whites-only” waiting room, despite the fact that no segregation signs were posted (yet another example of the “invisible hand” of racism at work) and despite the 1955 ban on segregation imposed on interstate buses, train lines, and their waiting rooms by the Interstate Commerce Commission.³¹ In 1967, Jackie Wilson, bandmate Jimmy Lee Smith, and two white women, Brenda Louise Britt and Janet Linda Fay Barfield, were all arrested in their motel rooms in Columbia, South Carolina, and charged with immoral conduct, each for entertaining the companies of the other (Britt and Barfield were additionally charged with disorderly conduct).³²

Of course, these types of incidents were common across the American South and in other regions of the country as well. Sorin notes that the privacy of travel by car was often preferred, as it was not subject to the rules imposed on travelers on rail and bus; it was, for many Black travelers, a way to resist restrictions and reclaim agency.³³ Additionally, there was a patriotic dimension to car travel, as “seeing America” was perceived as a means of participating in the “American experience.” Geographers Derek Alderman Page 94 →and Joshua Inwood point out that, “The right to move across space on one’s own terms and to resist efforts to constrain one’s mobility has long been part of the African-American struggle for equality and justice—from escaping slavery to the post-emancipation Great Migration out of the South, from the freedom rides of the Civil Rights Movement to more recent transportation justice campaigns.”³⁴

Although mistreatment of Black travelers was common, it should not be understood as “normal” or in any way normalized. As Sorin notes, “The emotional and psychological effects of continual racist encounters—day in and day out, on buses, trains, and other public conveyances—exerted an emotional toll that was both exhausting and long lasting.”³⁵ Furthermore, we argue that printed texts had the potential to be traumatizing as well. Signage such as “Whites Only,” the labeling of individuals or groups as “Negro” or “Colored” that pervaded newspaper articles, city directories, and, of course, the official written laws that denied rights on the basis of skin color, all reinforced exclusionary racist practices and perpetuated a sense of otherness. Seen in these terms, interventions into this system were necessary to improve the well-being of Black citizens in our country; therefore, it is important that we see the Green Book as more than a quaint historical curiosity. Rather, the Green Book allowed travelers to “mock Jim Crow.”³⁶ For Green Book businesses, the deliberate act of advertising in the Green Book was a political move, an attempt to alter the course and pave a safe road for Black travelers, despite attempts to intimidate and incite fear.

Before Green’s publication of the Green Book, Sadie Harrison and Edwin Henry Hackley published one of the very first guides for the Black traveler, Hackley & Harrison’s Hotel and Apartment Guide for Colored Travelers (published in 1930 and 1931). In its first issue, the guide included listings in three hundred cities, twenty-six of which were located in six South Carolina counties³⁷ Another such guide was A Directory of Negro Hotels and Guest Houses, published by the US Department of the Interior National Park Service in 1939, itself noteworthy because it stands as evidence that the government was aware of the limitations to and dangers of travel. The Travel Bureau wanted to “develop the nation’s physical, economic, and social welfare by encouraging more Americans to travel in their own county,” and included three sites in South Carolina.³⁸ Musician Billy Butler published another guide, Travelguide, from 1947 to 1957, pointing travelers to sites identified through his network of traveling musicians. Other such publications include Grayson’s Travel and Business Guide, The Go Guide to Pleasant Motoring, and Smith’s Tourist Guide.³⁹

Page 95 →As for the Green Book, in the 1948 edition, Green commented on several inspirations for publishing his travel guide:

With the introduction of this travel guide in 1936, it has been our idea to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trips more enjoyable. The Jewish press has long published information about places that are restricted [non-Kosher vs. Kosher establishments] and there are numerous publications that give the gentile whites all kinds of information. But during these long years of discrimination, before 1936 other guides have been published for the Negro, some are still published, but the majority have gone out of business for various reasons.⁴⁰

It is important to note that not every Black-owned business located within a particular city and state was included within the Green Book.⁴¹ Early on in its publication, Green writes that “Advertisers have been selected with care and are always the best representative and responsible in their field.”⁴² To help accomplish this, Green enlisted the help of fellow postal workers as well as Green Book readers. By the 1941 edition, however, Green included a disclaimer on page four: “We have given you a selection of listings that you might choose from, under no circumstances do these listings imply that the place is recommended.”⁴³ Perhaps the guide was growing too fast to guarantee, with individual visits and firsthand knowledge, the quality of individual establishments. Regardless, Green also made a point to encourage readers to openly communicate any dissatisfactions or complaints against Green Book businesses, as well as errors within the guide.

The first edition of the Green Book to include listings outside of Green’s home state of New York was published in 1938 and included twenty-four entries across South Carolina in Aiken, Charleston, Columbia, Florence, Georgetown, and Spartanburg. The following year, travelers found sixty South Carolina listings in the Green Book. Anderson, Darlington, Greenville, “Mullens,” and Sumter were included, as were listings for barbers, drug stores, and other businesses. Businesses in South Carolina routinely appeared in the Green Book over the nearly thirty annual editions. Columbia, as the centrally located capital, routinely had several listings, whereas towns such as Anderson, Myrtle Beach, and Darlington, for example, were represented with fewer businesses; some, however, are still serving customers today.⁴⁴

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One such extant building listed in the Green Book was a tourist home by the name of the Ebony Guest House in Florence. Built in the 1920s and located at 712 North Wilson Street, the Ebony Guest House first opened its doors to Black travelers on May 30, 1949.⁴⁵ Geraldine Barkley, granddaughter of Mary Holmes, who was the owner and operator of the Ebony Guest House, fondly remembers her childhood years growing up with her grandparents and living next door to the guest house: “She [Mary Holmes] always had a business mind … she always had some little kinda business going on, you know, she used to do cooking and sell sandwiches to the people who worked on the railroad … she always had something going on … She seen the need for it [the guest house] … because Black people, when they came to town, they couldn’t stay in the hotel.”⁴⁶

For roughly twenty-five years, Black travelers from all over the nation came to the Ebony Guest House for its hospitality, modern conveniences, and ideal location. Moreover, because of its close proximity to the American Legion Stadium (now Dr. Iola Jones Park, located at the corner of Oakland Avenue and East Maxwell Street), various celebrities stayed at the Ebony Page 97 →Guest House when performing at the stadium or as a resting stop while on tour. Such celebrities included Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, Mahalia Jackson, Buddy Johnson, Ike and Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, The Shirelles, Amos and Andy, The Marvelettes, Shirley Caesar, Ruth Brown, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Shirley and Lee, among others.⁴⁷

As children, Barkley and her siblings often helped their grandmother perform various chores at the guesthouse. When asked of her experiences with the celebrities who stayed there, she explained: “We used to take them their meals and sheets to put on the bed…. I liked Fats Domino because he was funny, but the majority of them [the celebrities] I liked … they stayed right here at the Ebony Guest House…. I remember one time my grandmother gave me a whipping because I was on the side of the guest house and peeping through the window, and I think it was … Shirley and Lee … when I peeped in the window—I guess they were making love to each other—and they looked up and seen me and they told my grandmother that one of the grandkids was peeping in the window and my grandmother wanted to know which one … when they described the one that had the pigtails in her hair … then my grandmother knew it was me!”⁴⁸

Another site of hospitality for Black travelers in Florence was the Richmond Tourist Home (Richmond Rest). It appeared in the Green Book in 1953, but the popular tourist home, located at 108 South Griffin Street and owned by Lillie Richmond, had been in operation since at least 1948.⁴⁹ In their book, Notable Blacks of the Pee Dee Section of South Carolina, Daniel Lane and Roy Cunningham wrote this of Richmond Rest: “Richmond’s Rest was a home away from home for many black railroad men. At this Griffin Street home, Mrs. Richmond was like a mother to many community persons and to the railroad men who stayed overnight or longer. These railroad workers always felt that they were coming home. Her meals were tasty, well balanced, and served in a wholesome environment. Her rates were kept in balance with those of the times.”⁵⁰ Aside from housing railroad workers, Richmond also played host to several minor league baseball players in the 1950s, all of whom were en route to Myrtle Beach where they were to train at the farm of the Boston Braves. These players included Roy White (pitcher, Eau Claire Bears), Pablo Bernard (second baseman and shortstop, Denver Bears), and Fernando Alberto Osorio (pitcher, Ventura Braves).⁵¹

Because the majority of intrastate newspapers of the time catered to a white audience, Richmond found it necessary to outsource advertisements of her business, often cleverly woven into local society columns in out-of-state newspapers such as Baltimore’s Afro-American and Norfolk’s New Page 98 →Journal and Guide; the latter employed her son, E. P. Broome, as a correspondent. When new guests arrived, Richmond informed her son, who would then submit the news for publishing. This news often read simply, “Henry Davis who resides at … Boston, Mass., stopped over at Richmond Rest, 108 S. Griffin St. last Wednesday evening.”⁵² Yet it was, nevertheless, an effective means of advertising and a contributing factor to the long-term success of Richmond Rest.

Before opening her tourist home, Richmond was the proprietor of Richmond Café, located at 323 East Evans St., which she successfully managed for approximately twelve years.⁵³ On Richmond’s death in July 1966, her obituary read that she was, “a member of Trinity Baptist Church … a voting citizen … and always participated in any project for the good of the community.”⁵⁴

Little is known about the tourist home of John and Alcess McDonald, once located at 501 South Irby Street (the current site of South Carolina Federal Credit Union). By trade, John was a blacksmith, and Alcess was a dressmaker and insurance agent. Alcess likely inherited the property and the house that became the tourist home from her parents, and she began offering “furnished rooms” during the 1930s. After Alcess died of cancer in 1942, John continued in his regular line of work as a blacksmith for several years. From 1942 to 1946, it is unclear whether the tourist home was operational, but by 1947, the name and address of John McDonald had been added to the list of Florence tourist homes included in the Green Book. In 1952, the McDonald Tourist Home was emphasized by an advertisement in the Green Book. However, by 1960, McDonald Tourist Home was no longer listed in the Green Book, and a year later in 1961, John McDonald died.

Sadly, much is left to the imagination as to the sort of lives lived by both the McDonalds and the various lodgers of the McDonald Tourist Home. The names of Nickolas Briscoe, Creasie Sanders, Beulah Robinson, Randolph Howe, James Carter, Daniel Scott, Sam and Virginia Harrison Jr., and Carl and Amie Bonapart are all on record as residing at the McDonald Tourist Home at various times between 1930 and 1950, but our knowledge of their stories largely ends there.⁵⁵ One is left curious to know more about the people who passed through the halls of the tourist home. Where did they come from? Where were they heading? What became of them once they left? The documentation of the lodgers’ names signifies their tangible yet transient existence in a place that has been all but forgotten in memory and a landscape during a time that is all too painfully recalled today.

Page 99 →Even less is known about the two matriarchs of Green Book tourist homes in Florence—C. E. Godbold (Catharine Godbold; listed as C. C. Godbold in the Green Book) and Bertha Wright. Godbold’s tourist home (227 East Marion Street) and Wright’s tourist home (1004 East Cheves Street) were the first Florence businesses to be featured in the Green Book, appearing alongside each other in the 1938 edition as the only two tourist homes for Black travelers in Florence. Both businesses first appeared in Hackley and Harrison’s guide, paving the way for future businesses of Black hospitality.⁵⁶ Godbold’s tourist home was advertised in the Green Book until 1940, and Wright’s tourist home was featured until 1960.⁵⁷

Although the stories of many of these listings remain a mystery, the inclusion of these listings testifies to the long-standing entrepreneurship and ingenuity of women proprietors such as Mary Holmes, Lillie Richmond, Alcess McDonald, and others. During an era in which few economic opportunities were available to women—let alone Black women—the women of the Green Book were ambitious and challenged the societal norms for women of their time. For boarding house proprietors in particular, the act of opening up one’s own home was a resourceful measure that provided Green Book businesswomen and their families with a source of income, a necessity for single or widowed Green Book businesswomen, as many Florence proprietors were. Aside from running operations at the Ebony Guest House, Holmes was also responsible for the care of twenty-two children (her own, plus her grandchildren and several nieces and nephews). Lillie Richmond and Bertha Wright both operated eating establishments for several years in conjunction with managing their tourist homes. And although she did not live to meet all of whom walked through the doors of her tourist home, Alcess McDonald left the legacy of a safe haven in the care of her husband, John, which he dutifully stewarded for seventeen years after her death. Candacy Taylor, author of Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, points out that, over the course of its publication, almost nine hundred beauty shops were listed in the Green Book, which were often owned by women who were “pillars of the community”; moreover, some of these businesses “served as headquarters for community development, especially during the birth of the civil rights movement.”⁵⁸ Furthermore, had Alma Green, wife of Victor Green, and her all-female staff not taken over publishing of the Green Book after Green’s death in 1960, the popular and influential travel guide may not be as widely remembered as it is today. Likewise, without the influence of Black women—more specifically, Black Page 100 →South Carolinian women and Black Florentine women—the representation of Black businesses in the Green Book for both South Carolina and Florence would have been severely lacking.

In addition to helping the traveler, the Green Book sites were often places of gathering for locals in the community, for Black citizens were often not permitted to enjoy meals or company with their fellow white counterparts. Rather than being the recipients of Southern hospitality, they were often relegated to back rooms, balconies, and spaces that were separate but, of course, not on par with the facilities reserved for “whites only.” In 1963, for example, in the city of Greenville, South Carolina, it was against city code for white and Black customers to eat in the same room. There was also a stipulation that there should be “[s]eparate eating utensils and separate dishes for the serving of food, all of which shall be distinctly marked by some appropriate color scheme.”⁵⁹ These utensils and dishes were also cleaned in a separate area of the kitchen. It was this sort of ill and unequal treatment of Black customers that sparked a movement of civil disobedience across the South in the 1960s. In Florence, in March of 1960, junior high and high school students, and members of the local youth chapter of the NAACP held a sit-in at the S. H. Kress & Co. Department Store lunch counter to protest the similarly unfair treatment of Black customers. Police were summoned on the second day of the protest, and forty-eight people (many of whom were minors) were arrested on charges of parading without a permit. The Kress lunch counter closed after the protest but later reopened in the 1970s and eventually began serving Black customers.⁶⁰ Additional protests took place in Nashville, Tennessee; Greensboro, North Carolina; and Rock Hill, South Carolina, among others.

Until the fullness of integration was secured, Blacks needed their own spaces within their own communities, and Green Book businesses were often the businesses that served this purpose. Moreover, depending on the type of establishment (restaurants, barbershops, beauty parlors, and drugstores) as well as the location, it is likely that certain businesses were frequented more so by locals rather than by travelers. Such businesses provided a kind of neighborly hospitality that helped to support community and served as “black counter-public spaces,” which recognize a rich history of African Americans claiming place of racial segregation as their own and transforming them into locations where Black identities, cultural traditions, and political debate could flourish separate from and in opposition to the white-dominated public sphere.”⁶¹

Page 101 →The College Inn (listed from late 1940s through the 1960s editions) in Cheraw (about fifty miles north of Florence) is, in fact, one such business. When it opened, it was next door to the Coulter Academy, a school for Black students. David Sides, the director of Tourism and Community Development for Cheraw, notes that “during the days of Coulter Academy, this establishment was the only place in town where Blacks were welcomed to sit and enjoy a hamburger and a shake.”⁶² Down in Florence, Ace’s Grill was another such place. Ace’s opened in Florence on the corner of East Cheves and Kemp Street around 1948 and appeared in the Green Book the following year as the first Florence restaurant to be featured. Co-owned by George and Luretha Dennison and Walter and Juanita Alston, Ace’s was arguably the most popular Green Book site for Florence locals and was well known throughout town for its Southern American staples such as fresh pit-cooked barbeque, fried chicken, and “He-man” hamburgers. The dance floor, jukebox, pool tables, and pinball machine at Ace’s were all added bonuses. Even renowned journalist and civil rights activist John H. McCray made mention of Ace’s Grill in his 1957 article “Roving About Car’lina.”⁶³

Throughout its history, Ace’s became a hub for many civic and community groups. In 1950, three Florida-based representatives of the International Association of Railway Employees came to Florence for the purpose of unionizing train porters and locomotive firemen of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. The Florence meeting was held at Ace’s Grill as part of a larger campaign to organize Black railway workers across the southeastern United States.⁶⁴ In the 1970s, Ace’s became the regular meeting spot for the alumni of Wilson High School, the Spaulding Heights Community Association, and American Legion Post #228.⁶⁵ After roughly forty-five years of business and many changes in management, Ace’s Grill closed its doors in the mid-1990s, likely in part because of the expansive development of McLeod Regional Medical Center in east Florence. In 1996, the Alston family sold the property to McLeod, and in 2011, McLeod sold it to PDN Properties, LLC. Pee Dee Nephrology (1100 East Cheves Street) is now situated on the lot where Ace’s Grill once stood.⁶⁶

First appearing in the Green Book in 1963, Spring Valley Motel and Restaurant was a ten-room establishment located on US Highway 301 North (now 4001 East Palmetto Street) where the Florence Flea Market now stands. The motel was originally owned and operated by James Miller and his wife, Marian, but after James’s death, the motel restaurant was taken over by another Green Book business owner, Paul Wright.⁶⁷ According to Reverend William Page 102 →Thompson, owner of Thompson’s Barber Shop in Florence, Paul Wright owned and operated the 400 Club on North Dargan Street (listed simply as “Wright’s” in the Green Book) for several years in the 1950s and early 1960s before moving his business out to the Spring Valley Motel & Restaurant.⁶⁸ In Notable Blacks of the Pee Dee, Lane states, “city and county residents looked forward to going to the 400 Club on Saturday. ‘Doc’ Wright always created an atmosphere equaled to no other establishment. First, in the 200-block of North Dargan Street, he operated an ‘elegant’ supper club and speakeasy. He later moved his business to the out-skirts of town to the Spring Valley Motel.” Once established at the Spring Valley Motel & Restaurant, “[Wright] continued the tradition of serving fine foods to small and large groups in his restaurant. Once, he bragged of serving five busloads of people.”⁶⁹

Mable’s Chicken Shack, also known as Mable’s Motel in Darlington (about ten miles northwest of Florence) is another example of a tourist pit stop and a local hot spot. Business began during the early 1940s, when Mable Robinson erected what her adopted brother Hubert Boatwright referred to as “a one room hot dog stand during tobacco season” on the lot that is now Blackmon Memorials, located at 1717 South Main Street in Darlington. According to Boatwright, Mable’s was the only place around where you could get a decent hot dog or hamburger at the time. Later, when Mable expanded the business and began adding more seating, she also began offering fried chicken and gave the restaurant the name, “Mable’s Chicken Shack.”⁷⁰

Through the years, Mable’s attracted local youths from both Darlington and Florence. Roosevelt Scott, a Darlington brick mason who described himself as “growing up” at Mable’s, said that Mable was famous for her chicken sandwiches and fries and described Mable as being strict with the kids. Along with food and soft beverages, Mable’s served alcohol, but, despite their best efforts, Mable made sure that none of the kids were ever served any beer if they were underage, according to Scott. Once the restaurant was established, Mable began adding rooms behind the building. Finally, there were between twenty and thirty rooms, enough to warrant the name Mable’s Motel, as it is listed in the Green Book. The motel was first listed in the 1956 edition and was one of only two Darlington listings ever to be included in the guide.⁷¹

Another site that embodies both the notion of neighborly hospitality and traveler hospitality was located in Columbia—the Motel Simbeth (listed from 1956 to 1961). The Motel Simbeth provided “Rest for the Weary on this side of the Jordan”⁷² and was co-owned by civil rights activist Modjeska Monteith Simkins, who taught history and civics at Benedict College in Columbia and advocated for better salaries and transportation for teachers, Page 103 →among other pursuits.⁷³ Historic Columbia notes that, “despite the intermittent violence and covert visits by civil rights figures with proverbial targets on their backs (Martin Luther King, Jr. once visited during the 1950s), the motel was also an oasis. Its only known depiction, which appeared in postcard form and in advertisements, shows a main structure set amongst pines and surrounded by cabins, with signage designating it as a space for Black guests.”⁷⁴

The Civil Rights Act in 1964 outlawed segregation on a national scale; however, by this time, the market for the Green Book was already in decline. The number of listings featured in each edition began to drop in 1956, which was likely due to a number of factors, including post–World War II industrialization, increased costs associated with retail merchants’ associations, the Great Migration, and fallout over the continued struggle over civil rights in the United States.⁷⁵ Green himself once prophesied that, “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 opportunities and privileges in the United States.”⁷⁶ With selfless regard for his life’s work, Green went on to say with hopeful longing that, “it will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.”⁷⁷ Sadly, having died in 1960, Green did not live to see his longing fulfilled. Perhaps sensing a shift in society’s attitudes toward integration, the word “Negro” was omitted from the title of the 1960 edition of the Green Book. In 1966, the final Green Book was published, bearing the name Travelers’ Green Book: International Edition.

After 1964, as Black people were beginning to be welcomed into new places and spaces that were once withheld from their patronage, a question quietly arose: What was to become of the hundreds of small businesses that were promoted and nourished by the Green Book? Some, such as the Ebony Guest House, Ace’s Grill, the Spring Valley Motel & Restaurant, The College Inn, and Mable’s Motel, outlasted the double-edged sword of integration and remained open. But what of those that didn’t? Arthur Lawrence, a Black Charlestonian who lived through decades of the Jim Crow and civil rights eras, boldly stated in a 2019 interview with the Historic Charleston Foundation that “integration was a bad thing for the Black community … in the time I was growing up, we had everything we needed. You had Black businesses. You had the stores. You had the restaurants, filling stations, taxicabs, lawyers, doctors, everything. But when integration came about, people forgot about what they had, and they’d want to go out and sample other people’s venues and left their venue behind. So their venue died.”⁷⁸ Although Lawrence’s Page 104 →statements are not representative of the entire Black community, many Black businesses were unable to withstand the competition of the newly available, formerly “whites-only” businesses and services. As more and more Black customers moved up the socioeconomic ladder and into other communities, their time, money, and resources went with them. The social and communal network that once upheld these businesses, either by association or proximity, began to wither and shrink. A vacuum was left behind, one that is still visible today in the growing urban decay of once flourishing Black communities.

Take, for example, Florence, the case study of this article. When walking the streets of downtown Florence, one reaches the railroad tracks intersecting North Dargan Street, a visceral yet unofficial boundary line of “historic downtown.”⁷⁹ By this point, one might assume that there is nothing left worth seeking out. Of course, seasoned Florentines know that the 200 and 300 blocks of North Dargan Street once housed Florence’s thriving Black business district.⁸⁰ Historically, from the birth of the city through the civil rights movement, Black Florentines lived and worked in either the northern or eastern portions of Florence in which most of Florence’s Green Book sites were located.

Yet, Florence, like other southern cities of the time, was also affected by mid-twentieth century industrialization, although it is unclear how many of these new industries were willing to employ Black workers and pay them a living wage. Nevertheless, in 1962, many young Black Florentines began leaving town and traveling north in pursuit of greater opportunities after becoming increasingly frustrated by unemployment and low wages. As more Blacks moved out of Florence, more whites moved in.⁸¹ Today, in north Florence, a handful of surviving businesses (e.g., barber shops, a funeral parlor) along with dilapidated residences and a vague historical marker are all that is left, entrusted with the complex and infeasible task of regaling the small-town grandeur of Black Florence, all of which have also historically and quite literally been located on “the wrong side of the tracks.” Although a few relics of a bygone era of Black industry remain in north Florence, the blocks of the once tightly knit Black residential communities of east Florence have, by and large, been completely eradicated—the land purchased and many of the homes and businesses vacated and razed to make way for the expansion of McLeod Regional Medical Center. The few pockets of homes that remain in East Florence are marred with blight, dotted along poor or unpaved roads, and tucked away along alleys and dead ends. Florence is not unique in this sense. One can drive across America—not only South Carolina or the South—and find that there exist parts of north and east Florence in every Page 105 →metropolis, city, and town, for the gatekeepers of “urban planning” and “revitalization” have often been inhospitable to Black communities at the cost of their history and culture.

Arguably before, but assuredly since the onset of integration, historically hospitable Black spaces have been gradually left to die. “A recent survey of the locations of the Green Book sites by ethnographer Candacy Taylor found that of the thousands of Green Book sites on record, only 5 percent are still in operation and more than 75 percent are gone.”⁸² Nevertheless, there are many still standing, testaments to the will and strength of the innovation and hospitality of Black citizens. Today, some of these extant sites are being documented, added to historical registers and are receiving historical markers.⁸³ As Nsenga Burton of The Root suggests, “If tourists and history buffs are willing to recreate Civil War battles or trace the Trail of Tears, then it would also seem worthwhile to spend some time finding out which locales in The Green Book are still standing or which establishments have taken their place.”⁸⁴

Moreover, today’s modern, integrated public spaces can, at times, still be inhospitable to Blacks. Two dichotomies can be true: During its day, the Green Book and other Black travel guides were vital tools for Black Americans, despite critics later claiming that they encouraged the continuity of segregation. Integration was a moral and ethical good for both Black and white America, despite Black businesses’ suffering as a result. The present-day quandary is twofold. First, we must work to maintain the integrity of historically Black spaces by keeping them hospitable (i.e., operational, visually appealing, structurally sound, technologically current, inviting, and welcoming).⁸⁵ Second, we must become better, more conscientious stewards of the hospitality that should be freely conferred by all persons upon all persons regardless of race, within the public sphere. For history has already suffered and will continue to suffer for the failure of the former, and past, current, and future generations have suffered and will continue to suffer for the failure of the latter.

Meredith A. Love is professor of English at Francis Marion University. She was a founding director of Center of Excellence for College and Career Readiness and is currently preparing a collection of essays related to South Carolina Green Book businesses.

Cherish Thomas is the registrar of the Florence County Museum. Her research interests include local history and the social, political, and religious culture of the American South. She is wife to Nick, and mom to eight cats: Elsa, Page 106 →Sundae, Tony, Taffy, Simon-Pierre, Stormcloud, Bullseye, and Pharaoh Qingdao-Rameses III.