Introduction

During Jim Crow, railroad companies deliberately made the cars designated for Black passengers uncomfortable and dirty. They did so not to prevent African Americans from purchasing tickets but rather, as Roger C. Hartley notes, to encourage white passengers to perceive the “significance of their own Whiteness” and the “fact of their own superiority.”¹ They did so, in other words, to make white travelers feel better about themselves. As Hartley explains, the railroad executives knew that Black passengers would continue to purchase tickets because they had no other means of travel. By forcing them into substandard cars, the companies could maintain Black revenue, even as they used Black suffering to appeal to white passengers’ worst prejudices. The railroad companies’ actions also, of course, spoke to African-American passengers, reminding them of their diminished social status and the power of authorities to impose dehumanizing conditions upon them. Hard seating and unswept floors carried powerful messages about status and subjugation.

Today’s readers may be tempted to see the railroad companies’ brutal actions as gestures from an age long past. Indeed, railroad cars are no longer segregated. Hotels, restaurants, and businesses can no longer refuse service based on race, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 made sundown towns, where African Americans faced violence after working hours, illegal.² Our age, we might assume, has progressed toward justice and fairness, and in many ways it has. Yet the old impulses of discrimination and exclusion persist. Those in Page xvi →authority continue to harm the vulnerable, and cynical public voices continue to villainize those who are different to preserve their own influence and relevance.

Segregation, of course, was always about more than separating people. It was also about asserting racial hierarchies and erasing the experiences of marginalized populations. We see vestiges of these intentions in recent actions, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency’s decision to purge references to Jackie Robinson, the Navajo Code Talkers, and the Tuskegee Airmen, and to the federal ban on activities related to Black History Month, Juneteenth, LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning) Pride Month, and Holocaust Remembrance Day.³ In each case, officials have worked to erase the identities and experiences of others and impose a restrictive, monolithic vision of American culture.

Within our state, actions such as the proposed anti-DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) legislation serve similar purposes.⁴ By obscuring the horrific legacies of racism and silencing the voices of the oppressed, state leaders effectively divert attention away from enduring inequities. And those inequities are substantial. The poverty rate for Black South Carolinians (23.1%) remains more than double that of the state’s white residents (9.3%).⁵ Disparities in Black and white homeownership, a key dynamic for social mobility, increased between 1990 (15.2%) and 2020 (26.6%) and will likely increase further by 2040 (27.9%).⁶ The preterm birth rate for Black mothers is 1.4 times higher than South Carolina’s overall rate, and Black infant mortality is 1.8 times higher.⁷ Recent studies have called attention to alarming diagnosis-to-treatment times for Black breast cancer patients.⁸ Other investigations have documented the degree to which structural racism worsened maternal health inequalities for minority women during the COVID-19 pandemic.⁹ A particularly disturbing 2025 report examines correlations between maternal social mobility and low birth weight. Downward social mobility, the study concludes, is more common for Black women than white women. Moreover, the “protective association” of upward mobility against low birth weight exists “only for the most highly educated Black women.”¹⁰ Collectively, these studies point out the severe realities that define experience for many South Carolinians. Sober minds recognize that no attack on DEI, no pledge to reward colorblind merit, and no scrubbing of curriculum will address the fundamental conditions that harm our fellow citizens.

Discrimination, however persistent, inevitably meets resistance. Those denied liberty and inclusion will invariably seek it. Even in the face of oppression they will, in the words of Richard Wright, continue “groping Page xvii →toward that invisible light” of freedom.¹¹ For many twentieth-century African Americans, resistance meant travel—the ability to break away from everyday concerns, visit family, see historical sites, and seek opportunity. But travel was fraught with uncertainty and danger. In response, a postal worker from Harlem named Victor Hugo Green began publishing The Negro Motorist Green Book in 1936. For thirty years, the many Green Book editions provided lists of hotels, tourist homes, restaurants, and other businesses that welcomed Black patrons. It encouraged African Americans to leave the places assigned to them and discover worlds beyond their own. It allowed Black musicians, entertainers, intellectuals, and civil rights leaders to meet and move about freely and safely. Debra Yeo, responding to Yorbura Richen’s documentary film on the Green Book, notes that Green’s publications created community by offering “a kind of parallel universe,” a “secret road map” of empowerment.¹²

The first four essays in this volume, introduced in the following text, discuss Green Book businesses in South Carolina and provide useful research tips to those who want to learn more about the histories of their communities. The Green Book essays are followed by three essays that take the reader back to the days before emancipation. John Barrington provides a detailed portrait of an eighteenth-century biracial Baptist church in the rural community of Welsh Neck, now part of Marlboro County. Barrington demonstrates that the inclusion of enslaved people originated in both the idealism of the American Revolution and fears of British invasion and slave revolt. He introduces the reader to Reverend Elhanan Winchester, a once-strict Calvinist who eventually embraced Universalism and used his considerable rhetorical skills to integrate his congregation. Winchester was aided by Colonial Alexander McIntosh, who allowed those he enslaved to worship in Winchester’s church. Integration in church did not, of course, cause enslavers to abandon the subjugation of their fellow worshipers, but it did, perhaps, encourage them to recognize the humanity and dignity of those they harmed.

Erica Johnson also investigates biracial faith communities in the Pee Dee. Focusing on Presbyterian churches in Aimwell, Hopewell, Indiantown, Salem, and Williamsburg, she presents a less idealistic depiction of integration. By the mid-nineteenth century, the egalitarian impulses of the American Revolution had long since faded, and the national divide on slavery had become inexorable. Christianity, with its celebrations of submission and promise of rewards beyond earthly life, became an instrument of control. It encouraged the enslaved to accept their station. At the same time, it Page xviii →mollified the consciences of enslavers who could rest easy knowing they had saved eternally those they harmed temporally. The fact that these actions took place within Presbyterian congregations suggests a bitter irony, given Presbyterianism’s foundational suspicions of hierarchy and authority. Johnson substantiates her argument with the testimony of African Americans who grew up in those churches before and immediately after emancipation. Using the oral histories recorded during the 1930s, she brings firsthand perspectives to her discussion and shows the durable links that tie past and present. Decades after the Civil War and Reconstruction, the intersections of faith and oppression remained vivid for those who shared their stories.

Moving from ecclesiastical to judicial concerns, Stan Barnett recreates two trials from nineteenth-century Marion, in which enslaved people were charged and eventually convicted of murder. Like John Barrington and Erica Johnson, Barnett builds his argument on primary sources that have not received scholarly attention. Through the transcripts of court testimony, he shows how the enslaved interacted with the criminal justice system. Modern readers might be surprised to learn that enslaved people charged with murdering white enslavers would even receive trials. Barnett demonstrates not only that they did, but also that they benefited from some legal safeguards. At the same time, however, the courts viewed them as property. Were they executed, as both defendants were, the state might owe compensation to their enslavers. For enslaved Black people in nineteenth-century South Carolina, legal protections originated only in part from their humanity.

These three essays, all focused on the Pee Dee region, provide unexpected glimpses into the lives of the enslaved and meaningfully complicate our understandings of their experiences. Together, they expose many of the dynamics that made Victor Green’s travel guides necessary and welcomed. Todd C. Couch’s essay takes the reader into the present. Providing practical suggestions for improving the recruitment and retention of faculty, staff and students on rural campuses, Couch emphasizes the importance of connecting institutions of higher learning to the communities they serve. His observations are particularly applicable to those working and studying at our state’s comprehensive teaching universities and technical colleges. In 2024, 206,566 students enrolled in South Carolina’s public institutions. Of these, 132,129 (approximately sixty-four percent) enrolled in comprehensive teaching universities and technical colleges, which also enrolled higher percentages of women and minority students than the state’s research universities.¹³ Comprehensive and technical institutions play tremendously important roles in South Carolina. They prepare large numbers of students Page xix →for careers and professions, they provide much-needed cultural experiences to underserved communities, and they invigorate rural economies. Couch shows how these institutions can attract and retain talented faculty and staff and how, by doing so, they can better serve students and surrounding areas.

The essay portion of the volume concludes with Andrew Geyer’s interview with novelist Lynn Kostoff and Jo Angela Edwins’s review essay of four recent volumes by South Carolina poets. For almost forty years, Kostoff has lived in South Carolina, working as both a university professor and writer. His novels, which follow many of the conventions of noir, take the reader on unexpected journeys and capture the richness and complexity of experience. Geyer’s interview reveals the dedication and craft that allow for compelling fiction. Edwins, herself an accomplished poet, introduces the reader to authors who embody the rich diversity of our state. The collections reflect the poets’ own resistant travels through loss and exclusion. Having transformed these experiences into art, they invite the reader to undergo similar journeys toward compassion and understanding. Although the poets confront many of life’s harshest realities, they also offer hope that horrific events can become meaningful gifts of solace and insight.

In many ways, Edwins’s review essay brings the volume back to Melissa LaCross’s brilliant introductory poem, “Daybreak Prayer on Edisto Island.” Reflecting on one of our state’s most beautiful locations, LaCross looks deeply into the ocean, seeing not only its beauty but also the force of its “ravenous tides.” Her hope is not to escape the ocean’s power but to embrace it, “to plunge deep in darkness/and come up fed.” She reminds us that journeys are often frightening and that nourishment comes from struggle. She also insists that beauty and profundity surround us. In these days, when so many certainties seem to be crumbling, we should remember the simple lessons that linger just below the surface of LaCross’s poem and the essays in this volume: The urge to travel and discover abides, resistance against injustice is never futile, and even in the darkest depths there remains the promise of new light.

Warm temperatures, beautiful beaches, and “well-planned, good roads” were promised by Governor George Bell Timmerman Jr. in a South Carolina State Development Board tourism brochure published around 1955.¹⁴ The swans and the magnolias, the anglers, and the Spanish moss featured on the brochure were an attempt to offset the negative assumptions that Page xx →Americans had about the South and the people who lived in it. Timmerman wanted to attract Northern tourist dollars, but he did not want to change the racial culture that would have made some Northern travelers uncomfortable. In fact, after winning the gubernatorial election in 1954, he did all that he could to ensure that South Carolina remained segregated. As reported in his The New York Times obituary, “he sought to thwart an order by the Interstate Commerce Commission for desegregation of long-distance travel in 1955, especially because it affected public waiting rooms. At the same time he opposed Federal court orders integrating public parks, bathing beaches and golf courses.”¹⁵ In other words, Timmerman welcomed only some to the state, insisting that, even in travel and leisurely pursuits, Black and white travelers should remain separate.

Black travelers during this period were acutely aware of the lack of hospitality and the possibility of violence that awaited them in South Carolina, and rather than look to brochures published by the state to guide their choices along the road, they turned instead to resources such as the Green Book. Inspired by travel guides for Jewish Americans, the Green Book, published by postal worker Victor Green, was one of the most popular guidebooks of the era.¹⁶ It was published from 1936 to 1966 and had an estimated annual printing of twenty thousand copies, which were sold in Esso Gas stations, churches, and other locations.¹⁷ It began as a sixteen-page guide to Black-friendly establishments in New York City; however, Green had a good many connections, and, by 1937, it was a national guide offering a state-bystate, city-by-city listing of restaurants, service stations, hotels, motels, and other businesses serving travelers. It eventually grew into a resource of more than one hundred pages.

The Green Book has enjoyed a great deal of public attention in recent years, primarily because of the release and acclaim of the 2018 award-winning film Green Book, directed by Peter Farrelly, which tells the story of the accomplished pianist Don Shirley who employs bouncer Tony “Lip” Vallelonga to drive him throughout the South on a concert tour in 1962. Shirley knows the potential dangers and pitfalls that await him on the road. The film depicts sundown towns and scenes where Shirley experiences discrimination and violence at the hands of whites. In one instance, Shirley and Lip are forced to stay in two different hotels when Shirley is prohibited from staying in the “white” hotel in Louisville. Shirley must stay at one listed in the Green Book—and it is bleak. The scene is dark; the parking lot where we see Shirley sitting outside (suggesting that there may not be air conditioning in the room) is run down and noisy. Shirley certainly appears out of place Page xxi →in this substandard establishment, a Black hotel that is clearly not as good as the white one. In many ways, this depiction is unfortunate. It assumes that Green Book businesses provided shabby accommodations and poor service. To be sure, many of the lodgings, known as tourist homes, were modest, often no more than spare rooms in a private residence, but there is little reason to imagine that they were uncomfortable or uninviting; nor should we assume that their surroundings were always dreary and poor. In a well-intentioned effort to show the depredations of segregation, the writers and director inadvertently erased or at least misrepresented important aspects of African-American life. The authors of the essays that follow seek to correct some of the assumptions created by movies such as Green Book. Exploring the lives of the men and women in South Carolina who operated Green Book businesses, they seek to show not only the struggles and injustices of Black experience in South Carolina but also its ingenuity and triumph.

The Green Book itself is only briefly mentioned in the film; however, it has certainly captured the public imagination. Interest in the origin of the publication and the sites listed within it has ballooned, with stories appearing in magazines, news outlets, podcasts, documentaries, and scholarly articles written by geographers, journalists, and historians. Additionally, several book-length publications have been released in just the past few years on the topic of the Green Book. In 2016, Alvin Hall completed a radio documentary on the Green Book that led to a twelve-day road trip. His 2019 podcast series, titled Driving the Green Book, then led to the publication of Driving the Green Book: A Road Trip Through the Living History of Black Resistance.¹⁸ Candacy Taylor’s 2020 book, Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, more than any other recent publication, delves deeply into the Green Book. Taylor includes hundreds of site photos and pages of Green Book content, covering topics such as music venues and the Black women who were often the owners of Green Book businesses. Gretchen Sorin’s 2020 Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights and Mia Bay’s 2021 Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance chronicle challenges that Black travelers faced. Bay covers rail, car, and air travel, and Sorin focuses entirely on the indispensability of travel guides for Black travelers. Additionally, there have been numerous articles published in mainstream magazines and newspapers, as well as a 2010 children’s book, Ruth and the Green Book, and a 2014 play titled The Green Book: A Play.¹⁹

On the state level, the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission, now known as the WeGOJA Foundation, has created an online travel guide—The Green Book of South Carolina—to direct travelers to more Page xxii →than three hundred sites important to African-American history in the state. In 2022, the foundation released The Green Book of South Carolina: A Guide to African America Cultural Sites as a hard-copy book.²⁰ Some Green Book sites are included in the guide, which seeks to expand our understanding of those sites and communities, and of the significance of sites that have been lost, and to help us plan excursions to visit those still standing.

In this third volume of Carolina Currents, we hope to introduce readers to the roles that Green Book sites played in different parts of the state over the years of its publication. All kinds of businesses—tourist homes, barber shops, taverns, funeral homes, hotels, restaurants, and services—from all over the state were represented over the course of the guide’s history. Here, we aim to deepen our understanding about the people behind the businesses and addresses recorded under “South Carolina” in The Negro Motorist Green Book from 1936 to 1966. The brief, one-line listings actually tell us very little about these establishments—usually just a name and address. The research presented here animates those listings and tells us the stories of family-run businesses and how they created and sustained community, of towns whose vibrant Black business communities are left unrepresented by the Green Book, and of the work being done today to recover and preserve these stories and memories.

By the time the Green Book came onto the scene, American families were just starting to make enough money to afford automobiles. Families had some disposable income, and American workers enjoyed more leisure time on weekends and designated days off for vacation. Not surprisingly, as cars became more affordable and more common, and more roads began to open, 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. South Carolina has always attracted visitors seeking better winter weather, and some towns such as “Aiken, Camden, and Summerville had been frequented by wealthy northerners” since the 1880s “either as destinations or as stops enroute to Florida.”²¹ The state’s commitment to tourism, however, did not gain real momentum until the 1920s. As cities began to focus on tourism as a money-making venture, they realized that there was little infrastructure to support large numbers of visitors. It was during this period that Charleston, in the midst of historic preservation efforts, opened two new hotels (Fort Sumter Hotel and the Francis Marion); Myrtle Beach’s first major hotel, the Ocean Forest Hotel, was completed in 1930.

Black travelers were excluded from hotels such as Ocean Forest Hotel, and they were on alert, in constant worry about finding restrooms and Page xxiii →service stations in addition to overnight accommodations. Oral histories conducted by researchers at the Beck Cultural Exchange Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, reveal that the Jim Crow laws in the South created a complex atmosphere for Black travelers: “For Black motorists, tourism was not simply the physical and technological work of driving, but it also required the emotional labor of managing the stress of driving within and against an atmosphere of White supremacy that always carried with it the uncertainty of how, when, and where one might encounter racial hostility while traveling.”²² This emotional weight was mitigated, in some part, by family and other networks that could provide addresses of relatives or friends who would welcome the travelers along the way. And although it could never guarantee absolute comfort or certainty, the Green Book allowed people some hope for hospitality on the road.

The first edition of the Green Book to include listings outside of New York, was published in 1938. It included twenty-five sites across South Carolina, in Aiken, Charleston, Columbia, Florence, Georgetown, and Spartanburg. Most of the listings were for hotels or women-run tourist homes. At the end of the issue, under South Carolina “Summer Resorts,” there is a one-line entry naming Atlantic Beach on Ocean Drive. The following year, travelers would have found forty-five South Carolina listings, and the towns of Anderson, Darlington, Greenville, and “Mullens” [sic] were included, as were listings for barbers, drug stores, and other businesses. Overall, more than one hundred South Carolina establishments were listed in the nearly thirty annual editions that were published.

Throughout the years, the Green Book provided customers with numerous possibilities in the state’s capital of Columbia. W. Maclane Hull introduces readers to one of the most prominent families in Columbia during the twentieth century—the Leevy family, whose service to the area stretches over seventy years. Leevy’s Service Station was advertised in the Green Book from 1950 to 1955 and was part of a network of several businesses owned by Black families. Together, with the Leevy family, these establishments supported both the traveler coming through the state’s capital and the permanent citizen of the city looking to establish and maintain community.

Another South Carolina city, Greenville, was home to more than a dozen Green Book sites, which also functioned as welcoming respites and important community hubs. Courtney L. Tollison and Rachel Gambrell take us deep into the stories of two of these businesses—212 John Street and Whittenberg’s Service Station. As a tourist home owned by Lurleen and Isaac White, 212 John Street was near Textile Hall and often hosted performers Page xxiv →who played there, including Duke Ellington. As part of the strong network of Black business owners and activists in Greenville, Abraham Jonah Whittenberg, owner of Whittenberg’s Service Station, stands as an important contributor to the civil rights movement in the Upstate. In this essay, we learn about Whittenberg’s many leadership positions within the movement and his personal drive to fight injustices on many different fronts.

Charleston, as another major city within South Carolina, was also home to around a dozen Green Book sites over the course of its publication. Although this may sound like a large number for a city during the mid-twentieth century, Barry Stiefel explains that these were not listed all at the same time and that there were very few options for those Black tourists who did visit the city. Stiefel’s history of accommodations for Black travelers and his discussion of those sites that were included in the Green Book serves as a reminder that a city so rich in Black history often took pains to make Black visitors feel anything other than welcome.

Cherish Thomas, in the section’s final piece, provides the reader with the mindset and tools necessary to explore Green Book sites in our communities. From the digital collections of the New York Public Library to other library databases to city directories, Thomas helps the reader get started on research that has the potential to reshape and illuminate local histories throughout the state.

Each of these contributions reminds us that there is history in South Carolina that has gone unmarked and that there are eminent South Carolinians who have gone uncelebrated. Of course, the Green Book is only one of the many artifacts that can point us to the undone work of researching and remembering. But within these issues, beyond those simple entries are stories of entrepreneurship and resourcefulness, of hospitality and community. The collection we have here is but an introduction to the stories that are still untold.

Christopher D. Johnson is professor of English and Trustees’ Research Scholar at Francis Marion University. His most recent book is Samuel Richardson, Comedic Narrative, and the Culture of Domestic Violence: Abused Pamela (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023). In addition to Carolina Currents, he is currently working on a book manuscript examining the rhetoric of early-modern biographies.

Meredith A. Love is professor of English and chair of English and philosophy at Francis Marion University, where she teaches courses in first-year Page xxv →composition, professional writing, gender studies, and rhetoric. For over six years, she has been researching the role of the Green Book as a tool of resistance. Currently, she is examining the visual rhetoric of the Green Book covers and how the images and artwork worked as persuasive tools to draw in readers. Her work has been published in Rhetoric Review, College Composition and Communication, and, most recently, the first volume of Carolina Currents.

1. 1. Hartley, Monumental Harm, 67.
2. 2. See Loewen, “Sundown Towns and Counties: Racial Exclusion in the South.”
3. 3. See Dilanian et al., “Federal Agencies Bar Black History Month”; and “Defense Department Webpage on Jackie Robinson Goes Down.”
4. 4. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, H. 3927, 126th General Assembly (2025).
5. 5. These data have been widely reported. See Talk Poverty.
6. 6. “Forecasting State and National Trends in Household Formation and Ownership.”
7. 7. “2024 March of Dimes Report Card.”
8. 8. Babatunde et al., “Racial Disparities and Diagnosis-to-Treatment Time.”
9. 9. Hung et al., “Analysis of Residential Segregation and Racial and Ethnic Disparities.”
10. 10. Kappelman et al, “Black/White Disparities in Low Birth Weight.”
11. 11. Wright, Black Boy, 227.
12. 12. Yeo, “The Real Book Behind Green Book.” See also Richen, dir., The Green Book.
13. 13. Perez, South Carolina Commission on Higher Education Statistical Abstract, 3, 8, 10.
14. 14. State Development Board Tourism.
15. 15. Saxon, “George B. Timmerman, Jr., 82, Segregationist Leader in 50s,” 30.
16. 16. See Taylor, Overground Railroad, 19–20.
17. 17. Townsend, “How the Green Book Helped African-American Tourists Navigate a Segregated Nation.”
18. 18. Hall and Weber, Driving the Green Book.
19. 19. Ramsey et al. Ruth and the Green Book; Ramsey, The Green Book: A Play.
20. 20. WeGOJA Foundation, and Parks, The Green Book of South Carolina.
21. 21. Edgar, South Carolina, 493.
22. 22. Edgar, South Carolina, 17.

• “2024 March of Dimes Report Card for South Carolina.” March of Dime Peristats, 2025. https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/reports/south-carolina/report-card.
• Page xxvi →Alderman, Derek, Kortney Williams, and Ethan Bottone. “Jim Crow Journey Stories: African American Driving as Emotional Labor.” Tourism Geographies 24, nos. 1–2 (2019): 198–222.
• Babatunde, Oluwole Adeyemi, Jan M. Eberth, Tisha M. Felder, et al. “Racial Disparities and Diagnosis-to-Treatment Time Among Patients Diagnosed with Breast Cancer in South Carolina.” Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 9 (2022): 124–34. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-020-00935-z.
• Bay, Mia. Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance. Harvard University Press, 2023.
• Bollinger, Alex. “Marjorie Taylor Greene threatens to beat up Sarah McBride on day before Trans Day of Remembrance.” MSN, November 20, 2024. https://www.msn.com/.
• “Defense Department Webpage on Jackie Robinson Goes Down, Then Returns Amid DEI Purge.” Associated Press, March 19, 2025. https://apnews.com/.
• Dilanian, Ken, Alexandra Marquez, Claretta Bellamy, and Dan De Luce. “Federal agencies bar Black History Month and other ‘special observances.’” NBC News, January 31, 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/.
• Edgar, Walter. South Carolina: A History. University of South Carolina Press, 1998.
• Farrelly, Peter, dir. Green Book. 2018. Universal Pictures, 2018. 130 min.
• “Forecasting State and National Trends in Household Formation and Ownership.” Urban Institute, March 18, 2021. https://www.urban.org/.
• The Green Book of South Carolina: A Travel Guide to S.C. African American Cultural Sites. 2025. https://greenbookofsc.com.
• Hall, Alvin. Driving the Green Book: A Road Trip Through the Living History of Black Resistance. HarperOne, 2023.
• Hall, Alvin, and Janée Woods Weber. Driving the Green Book. September 2020. https://alvinhall.com/radio/radio-podcast-driving-the-green-book.
• Hartley, Roger C. Monumental Harm: Reckoning with Jim Crow Era Confederate Monuments. University of South Carolina Press, 2021.
• Hung, Peiyin, Jihong Liu, Chelsea Norregaard, et al. “Analysis of Residential Segregation and Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Severe Maternal Morbidity Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” JAMA Network Open 5, no. 10 (2022): e2237711. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.37711.
• Kappelman, Abigail L., Annie Ro, Lindsay Admon, Belinda L. Needham, and Nancy L. Fleischer. “Black/White Disparities in Low Birth Weight Across Maternal Trajectories of Social Mobility in South Carolina.” Social Science & Medicine 366 (2025): 117675. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117675.
• Loewen, James William. “Sundown Towns and Counties: Racial Exclusion in the South.” Southern Cultures 15, no. 1 (2009): 22–44.
• Perez, Jeffrey L. South Carolina Commission on Higher Education Statistical Abstract, 46th Edition 2024. South Carolina Commission on Higher Education, 2024. https://che.sc.gov/sites/che/files/Documents/CHE%20Data%20and%20Reports/Statistical%20Abstracts/2024_Statistical_Abstract-WEB.pdf.
• Ramsey, Calvin Alexander. The Green Book: A Play. Calvin Alexander Ramsey, 2014.
• Ramsey, Calvin Alexander, Gwen Strauss, and Floyd Cooper (illustrator). Ruth and the Green Book. Carolrhoda Books, 2010.
• Page xxvii →Richen, Yoruba, dir. The Green Book: Guide to Freedom. Viacom, 2019.
• Saxon, Wolfgang. “George B. Timmerman, Jr., 82, Segregationist Leader in 50s.” The New York Times. December 3, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition-Final, 30.
• Sorin, Gretchen. Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to the Civil Rights. Liveright Publishing, 2020.
• State Development Board Tourism Promotional Brochure, ca. 1955, S 149013. South Carolina Department of Archives and History.
• Talk Poverty, 2025. https://www.talkpoverty.org.
• Taylor, Candacy. Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America. Abrams Books, 2020.
• Townsend, Jacinda. “How the Green Book Helped African-American Tourists Navigate a Segregated Nation.” Smithsonian Magazine, December 18, 2024. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/.
• WeGOJA Foundation and Joshua Parks (photographer). The Green Book of South Carolina: A Travel Guide to African American Cultural Sites. Hub City Press, 2022.
• Wright, Richard. Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth. Harper & Brothers, 1937.
• Yeo, Debra. “The Real Book Behind Green Book: A Means to Keep Black Americans Safe But Also a Guide to Having Fun.” Toronto Star, February 19, 2019. https://www.thestar.com/.