The Project of a Lifetime: A Guest Post by Candacy Taylor

A gripping deep-dive into the Green Book from an award-winning author. Read on for an exclusive essay from Candacy Taylor on writing Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America.

I stumbled onto the Green Book by accident. I had been commissioned to write a Moon travel guide on Route 66, and when I learned that nearly half the counties along the Mother Road were sundown towns—communities that banned Black people after dark—I wondered, How did Black people travel during Jim Crow?

The following week, I visited the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, where a Negro Motorist Green Book sat tucked away under glass. It was 2013—four years before the Hollywood film—and I had never heard of the Green Book, but it made sense that such a guide had existed. I snapped a photograph, walked from the dark museum into the bright light outside, and blinked until everything came into focus. I realized I was going to be the first Black person to write about Route 66 while viewing America through the lens of the Green Book. It was the project of a lifetime.

I called my parents from the steps outside the Autry Museum. “Did you ever use a travel guide called the Negro Motorist Green Book?” I asked my mom.

“No, I’ve never heard of it,” she said. Then she yelled, “Ron! Have you heard of the Negro Motorist Green Book?”

My stepfather picked up the extension from his basement mancave. “Yeah. We used it when I was a kid. It had all the Black restaurants and juke joints. You needed it. Everybody had one.”

Since that day at the Autry, I have crisscrossed America on two-lane highways nearly a dozen times, driving through neighborhoods where Green Book businesses once thrived and documenting what I found. I clocked over 100,000 miles crossing desert plains, mountain ranges, and pristine coastlines, but I also passed miles of blighted neighborhoods with boarded-up buildings in nearly every American city. On the road, I felt the tenor of a bygone era and witnessed a new cycle of grit and survival along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevards across the nation.

I ran a tight ship, working sixteen-hour days, following a precise mapping system where I could scout up to thirty Green Book listings a day. Photographing these sites gave me an understanding of the Green Book that I never could have accessed from my office at Harvard University. During these trips, I was verbally threatened, chased by dogs, and nearly physically assaulted. To stay safe, I traveled with a knife under the car seat, a stun gun in the door pocket, and Mace behind the gearshift. All the while, I couldn’t help but think this was not the future Victor Green—or even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—had imagined.

Nearly 80 percent of Green Book sites are gone, and fewer than 5 percent of the businesses are still operating, so it was common to drive for days without finding a single one. On the rare occasion when I did, it rose from the sidewalk like a rare and beautiful force of nature, redefining sanctuary, the agency of place, and the story of race in America. I was right: it has been the project of a lifetime.