Automobility, Hospitality, African American Tourism, and Mapping Victor H. Green's Negro Motorist Green Book

Abstract

Victor Green's travel guide stands as one illustration of tools used by African Americans to survive in the contested and disputed landscape of Jim Crow segregation. The Green Book as a symbol of the civil rights movement further represents the discourses and politics of automobility that both limit and empower resistance. The Green Book is an under-utilized source available to historical geographers for researching the numerous barriers to tourism. Racial discrimination is one that is especially under-analyzed. This research advances the field of digital humanities and historical GIS as well as pushing close the epistemological qualitative-quantitative discord over using geographic information systems to support geo-analytic approaches in human geography.