Greenville in the Green Book

Before opera star Marian Anderson desegregated the Dyckman Hotel in Minneapolis, and performers Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, and Nat King Cole successfully challenged Las Vegas’s segregated hotel policies, African-American performers were bound by law to stay in segregated hotels, private homes, or tourist homes.³ Over the course of its thirty-year run, the Green Book listed two tourist homes for Greenville County, one operated by Miss M. J. Grimes and another by Mrs. W. H. Smith.

From at least 1930, Lurleen Smith and her husband, William Henry “Kid” Smith, lived in Greenville’s Southernside neighborhood at 212 John Street with their daughter, Helen.⁴ Kid Smith was the proprietor of a billiards and pool hall, known as the Railroad Men’s Athletic Club, and a professional gambler.⁵ When he died in 1935, Lurleen and her daughter stayed in the home and began taking in African-American boarders and providing overnight accommodations to visitors. In the early 1940s, Lurleen married Isaac White, who moved into her large home at 212 John Street.⁶ Isaac White worked at various times at the Poinsett Hotel, as manager of the Broad Street Café and as a school principal. He was also an events promoter who handled Page 28 →the logistics for performers visiting the area, including their overnight accommodations.⁷

From the 1930s to the 1960s, Greenville hosted high-profile Black performers, including Marian Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Roy Brown, Ruth Brown, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Willis “Gator” Jackson, Ivory Joe Hunter, “Little” Esther Phillips, Della Reese, and Sarah Vaughn.⁸ According to interviews with local residents, including Lurleen White’s granddaughter, Lurleen and Isaac White hosted many of these visiting musicians in their two-story clapboard home, which was built around 1910.⁹ It was located approximately half a mile from Textile Hall, where these musicians usually performed.

In the early and mid-twentieth century, Black performers enchanted white audiences, but as soon as the show was over, Jim Crow ordinances prevailed. This was not strictly a southern policy. Rat Pack performer Sammy Davis Jr. once recalled that, in Las Vegas, known as the “Mississippi of the West” among African-American people in the 1950s, his skin had “no color” onstage. The moment he walked offstage, however, he and other Black musicians were “colored again…. The other acts could gamble or sit in the lounge and have a drink, but we had to leave through the kitchen with the garbage.”¹⁰

Some of the Black acts in Greenville, including Ella Fitzgerald, were advertised as “white-only” performances, although most were open to Blacks and whites.¹¹ Isaac White, however, often worked with visiting artists to arrange another performance exclusively for African Americans. These after-party performances occurred at his home, where the performers stayed overnight. Advertisements for these postperformance parties never listed the featured musician’s name. In Duke Ellington’s case, a member of his band served as the headliner on the handbill, with admission costing approximately one-third of the cost to attend the Ellington’s performance at Textile Hall. These intimate performances in “Mrs. W. H. Smith’s Tourist Home” circumvented Jim Crow laws and represent a discreet display of African-American agency.¹²

As the promoter for many of these high-profile African-American performers, Isaac White often relied on local African-American businesses, including Green Book site Gibb’s Pharmacy, to publicize his events and sell tickets. In Greenville, African-American businesses were part of a small, connected, cohesive network. Whittenberg’s Service Station similarly served as a site to purchase tickets to philanthropic and other events that benefited the African-American community, such as a 1965 speaking engagement by Page 29 →Roy Wilkins, the executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).¹³

In 1948, Whittenberg’s Service Station owner Abraham Jonah Whittenberg was a thirty-year-old Black man in a city that had recently been in the national spotlight. Rebecca West of the New Yorker and other national journalists had covered Greenville’s 1947 trial of two dozen white men accused of lynching Willie Earle, an African-American man five years younger than Whittenburg.¹⁴ Many viewed the simple fact that there was a trial as sign of racial progress. However, the acquittal of twenty-eight men by an all-white, all-male jury indisputably affirmed the local racial imbalance of power. The verdict enraged Whittenberg and eventually inspired him to become active in the movement for racial justice. Decades later, Whittenberg highlighted the impact of the lynching: “If it had not happened, I probably would not have been so eager to work for the betterment of blacks. It was the fertilizer for growth.”¹⁵

His political activism began in the 1940s and continued throughout much of his life. He served as chairman of the Greenville City Election Commission, vice chairman of voter registration for the Greenville County Democratic Party, president of the Greenville branch of the NAACP, a member of the Chamber of Commerce’s biracial committee, and a delegate to the 1972 Democratic Party National Convention.

In October 1959, during Whittenberg’s time as the local NAACP president, he helped host Jackie Robinson, who was credited with breaking the color barrier in major league baseball. As Robinson was leaving, he was threatened with arrest after sitting in a “whites only” section at the Greenville airport. Embarrassed and angry, Whittenberg and other protestors planned and executed a march on the airport on January 1, 1960. Images of hundreds of African Americans marching to overturn Jim Crow policies drew national attention. One month later, four college students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University sat in at a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, a moment that historians long considered the beginning of the activist phase of the civil rights movement in the South. The march on the airport spurred protest activity at the library, downtown lunch counters, and local churches that eventually resulted in overturning local Jim Crow ordinances.

After having inspired such progress toward desegregation, Whittenberg turned his efforts toward his eleven-year-old daughter, Elaine. After Page 30 →Brown v. The Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, Whittenberg became frustrated with the lack of action toward school desegregation in Greenville County. With support from his wife, Eva, who worked as a maid at the Christie Pediatric Group, he sent letters to superintendent Dr. M. T. Anderson requesting that Elaine be transferred from Gower School to Anderson Street School, a “whites-only” school. In an interview with The Greenville News, Whittenberg stated, “Any parent, if they love their child, wants the very best for their child…. We are assuming that the school board will accept the transfer…. If she is refused, we intend to take whatever legal steps are necessary.”¹⁶

Superintendent Anderson denied Whittenberg’s request, along with those of five other families who had also requested transfers to white schools. Staying true to his word, Whittenberg and his attorneys filed a lawsuit against the School District of Greenville in 1963. After a hard-fought case, Whittenberg won the lawsuit. Token desegregation began in Greenville schools in April 1964 when Elaine and five other African-American students became the first to attend “whites-only” schools.¹⁷

A. J. Whittenberg’s activism did not come without consequences. Soon after Elaine broke the racial barrier, he was forced to close his service station. Whittenberg’s activism “was disastrous for his business,” his daughter recalled soon after her father’s death. Although the loss of the family business undoubtedly brought great stress to the Whittenberg family, it likely paled in comparison with the stress caused by the threats they received. In an oral history from April 2002, Elaine described the horrors that her family faced: “My father had many threats. And we had threatening letters. Our phone was mainly unlisted, but his business phone was inundated with threats and even people threatening him openly.” She explained how her father once received a letter in the mail that included a picture of Elaine with a noose around her neck.¹⁸

In 2010, a new elementary school opened in Greenville, named in honor of A. J. Whittenberg.¹⁹ Greenvillians are now much more aware of A. J. and Elaine Whittenberg’s courage and the price they paid for their perseverance.

Sixty years after the Green Book ceased publication, estimates suggest that less than twenty percent of the sites listed are extant. For South Carolina, as of 2021, approximately thirty percent of the Green Book listings remain.²⁰ Most of the fourteen sites listed in the Green Book for Greenville area are gone. Whittenberg’s Service Station no longer exists, although A.J. and Page 31 →Elaine Whittenberg’s legacy endures at the school named in his memory. 212 Asbury Avenue (the former 212 John Street) stands as one of the few extant Green Book sites in Greenville County.²¹ It is an important site of not only African-American agency but also the perpetuation of African-American culture, as evidenced by the increase in local media attention and community support for its preservation in the 2020s.²² As noted by others in this issue, researching Green Book sites remains important work, as each site—including the location, proprietors, and customers—provides its own stories and rich evidence of the resistance and ingenuity of African Americans in our communities’ history.

Courtney L. Tollison is the Distinguished University Public Historian and Scholar at Furman University, where she has taught since 2004. She is the author of Furman University, World War II and Upcountry South Carolina: “We Just Did Everything We Could”; “Our Country First, The Greenville”: A New South City During the Progressive Era and World War I; and Furman University, 1826–2026: An Illustrated History.

Rachel Gambrell is a third-year history major at Furman University from Greenville, South Carolina. Her research focuses on American history, specifically twentieth-century social justice movements and the underrepresented figures involved in their successes. Rachel’s current work as an intern for the preservation of 212 Asbury Avenue, a former Green Book tourist home, has inspired her contributions to this essay.

1. 1. According to Greenville, SC City Directories, the address of 212 John Street changed to 212 Asbury Avenue sometime between 1945 and 1949. In the Green Book listings, however, it remained 212 John Street.
2. 2. Green, The Negro Motorist Green Book, 1948.
3. 3. See Belafonte, My Song, 158–59; Gavin, Stormy Weather, 243.
4. 4. According to the US Census, 1930, William Henry Smith and Lurleen Hallums married on January 19, 1916. See also Greenville County, South Carolina, US, Marriage License Index, and Bainbridge, “A Railroad Runs Through History of Greenville’s Southernside Community.” Official records are inconsistent in the spelling of Lurleen’s name.
5. 5. US Census, 1920. See also “212 Asbury, South Carolina Historic Properties Survey,” and “South Carolina Death Records, and U.S.,” and “City Directories, 1822–1995.”
6. 6. Bainbridge, “A Railroad Runs Through History of Greenville’s Southernside Community”; “Greenville, SC City Directory (1943)”; and “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.”
7. 7.Page 32 →Jeter, “Still Standing”; “Greenville, SC City Directory (1945).”
8. 8. See advertisement appearing in The Greenville News on March 21, 1947; September 11, 1949; April 10, 1950; June 3, 1951; April 13, 1952; and March 10, 1953.
9. 9. “212 Asbury, South Carolina Historic Properties Survey.”
10. 10. Salem, The Late Great Johnny Ace, 122–23; Green, “The Mississippi of the West,” 57.
11. 11. The Greenville News, November 10, 1945.
12. 12. Despite the fact that Lurleen Smith married Isaac White and is listed in census records and city directories from the early 1940s on as Lurleen White, the Green Book continued to use Mrs. W. H. Smith as the contact for her tourist home between 1946 and 1954.
13. 13. “NAACP Plans Member Drive,” The Greenville News, December 9, 1965, 24.
14. 14. West, “Opera in Greenville.”
15. 15. Hoover, “The Lynching of Willie Earle; O’Neill, “Memory, History, and the Desegregation of Greenville,” 288; Whittenberg, interview by William Gravely, 13 December 1982; Whittenberg, interview by William Gravely, 28 November 1989.
16. 16. Steadman, “Transfer to Anderson School.”
17. 17. Boyce, “… More Good People in the World”; O’Neill, “Memory, History, and the Desegregation,” 293–94.
18. 18. Boyce, “… More Good People in the World.” According to the 1963 Greenville, SC City Directory, the Whittenbergs lived at 903 Dunbar Street.
19. 19. Located at 420 Westfield Street, the A. J. Whittenberg School of Engineering, enrolls four hundred seventy-nine students in Grades K–5. The school has received more than twenty awards and honors, including recognition as a National Blue Ribbon School in 2020. See “2024–25 Profile.”
20. 20. “Green Book Properties Listed in the National Register.” This article quotes Jennifer Reut, an architectural historian with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
21. 21. Letter from Ramon Jackson to Unknown Recipient, undated, in author’s possession. Jackson was the South Carolina African American Heritage Coordinator for the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.
22. 22. See Jeter, “Still Standing.”

• “212 Asbury, South Carolina Historic Properties Survey.” South Carolina Department of Archives and History, accessed September 10, 2025. http://schpr.sc.gov/index.php/Detail/properties/31401.
• “2024–25 Profile: A. J. Whittenberg School of Engineering.” Greenville County Schools, October 15, 2024. https://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/Schools/profile.asp?schoolid=ajw.
• Bainbridge, Judy. “A Railroad Runs Through History of Greenville’s Southernside Community.” The Greenville News, March 5, 2019. https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/life/2019/03/05/bainbridge-railroad-runs-through-history-greenvilles-southernside/3053493002/.
• Page 33 →Belafonte, Harry, with Michael Shnayerson. My Song: A Memoir of Art, Race, and Defiance. Canongate Books, 2012.
• Boyce, Elaine Wittenberg … More Good People in the World.” By Justin Baldwin. Champions of Civil and Human Rights in South Carolina. A Digital Exhibition by the Department of Oral History at the University of South Carolina, April 23, 2002. https://digital.library.sc.edu/exhibits/champions/volume-3-2/part-2/elaine-wittenberg-boyce-more-good-people-in-the-world/.
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• Hoover, Dan. “The Lynching of Willie Earle, SC’s Last, Foreshadowed Changing Time.” The Greenville News, April 9, 2018.
• Jeter, John. “Still Standing: Southernside Neighborhood Looks Back on Troubled History, Ahead to Unity Park.” Greenville Journal, February 21, 2020. https://greenvillejournal.com/.
• “NAACP Plans Member Drive.” The Greenville News, December 9, 1954, 24. https://www.newspapers.com.
• O’Neill, Stephen. “Memory, History, and the Desegregation of Greenville.” In Toward the Meeting of the Waters, edited by Vernon Burton and Winfred B. Moore. University of South Carolina Press, 2008.
• Salem, James M. The Late Great Johnny Ace and the Transition from R &B to Rock ‘n; Roll. University of Illinois Press, 2001.
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• Page 34 →Steadman, Ethel A. “Transfer to Anderson School Here Is Asked By Negro Girl.” The Greenville News, August 9, 1963, accessed September 10, 2025. https://www.newspapers.com.
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• West, Rebecca. “Opera in Greenville.” New Yorker, June 6, 1947. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1947/06/14/opera-in-greenville.
• Whittenberg, A. J. Interview by William Gravely, 13 December 1982. William Gravely Oral History Collection on the Lynching of Willie Earle. South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.
• Whittenberg, A. J. Interview by William Gravely, November 28, 1989. William Gravely Oral History Collection on the Lynching of Willie Earle. South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.