Springfield was just profiled in a 'Green Book' movie — but not the one that won 3 Oscars
Gregory J. Holman
When "Green Book" took home three Oscars on Sunday night — including the one for best picture — it opened up a conversation about whether the movie deserved all the hoopla. Some thought it was out-of-date. Racist, even.
The film is set in the 1960s. The script was inspired by historical events, following a black jazz pianist who hires a white driver/bodyguard to drive through the deep South.
The musician and the driver use "The Green Book" — a guidebook listing hotels and other safe accommodations for African-American travelers — to find their way.
Lyle Foster, who teaches in Missouri State University's sociology and anthropology department, says the Oscar winner serves a good purpose, even if it's controversial.
Foster said the movie is creating awareness about the real "Green Book," in a time when many Americans don't remember the guidebook or the ways that segregation and overt racism influenced American life before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.
"It's hard to explain," he said. "Students can't wrap their brains around the legal environment of the nation at that time. You have to explain the setting so they can understand the necessity (of 'The Green Book.')"
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In 1936, a postal worker in Harlem named Victor Hugo Green started publishing "The Green Book." Even in his Big Apple neighborhood — a world center for black community and culture, then as now — there were plenty of hotels and restaurants that wouldn't serve black people. Someone needed to make a list of ones that would.
"Understanding things like 'The Green Book' gives us insight into understanding this era," Foster said.
Foster compared the Hollywood "Green Book" to other movies like "Hidden Figures" that are largely fictional but cast some light on "hidden chapters" of black history, including the importance of Green's guidebook.
"It was almost like it was a parallel world, a parallel universe that existed right in front of our eyes," Foster said.
As soon as the guidebook was published, it became clear that there was pent-up demand from black American families for safe travel information. Leveraging his connections at the U.S. Post Office, Green made the book into a national travel guide by 1940. It listed thousands of hotels, restaurants and other places of public accommodation, many of them owned by African-American entrepreneurs.
By 1960, "The Green Book" had 2 million readers. Springfield, along with a bunch of other Route 66 towns, was listed.
The National Parks Service compiled a list of establishments in Route 66 towns that were even listed in traveler guides for African Americans.
About a dozen guest houses, restaurants and hotels are on the National Parks Service list. But in the actual "Green Book," Springfield usually only had just a couple of listings each year.
Another 'Green Book' film — with a Springfield tie
That's where a second film about the guidebook comes into play.
"The Green Book: Guide to Freedom" aired for the first time Monday night on the Smithsonian Channel and is currently free to watch online.
It's an hour long documentary made by Yoruba Richen, a filmmaker who formerly worked for the ABC News investigative unit and now teaches journalism.
Richen, who lives in New York, told the News-Leader on Tuesday that she had never heard of Green's guidebook until she was approached to make a documentary about it two years ago.
"That was immediately why I was interested in doing the documentary," she said. "I was immediately figuring out how to tell the story because it was obvious that it would be a way to tell so many types of stories of the black experience."
Richen gave examples: the rise of a black middle class that could afford automobiles, leisure activities and vacations. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurship and the women-owned businesses that helped create that middle class was documented in "Green Book" listings.
Meanwhile, Richen's "Guide to Freedom" documentary is getting good reviews in Springfield, in part because the film portrays both positive and negative episodes of Missouri history.
"The documentary is excellent," said John Sellars, director of the History Museum on the Square, which includes a copy of "The Green Book" in its collections. "It's very, very good."
The documentary places Missouri in the context of "sundown towns" — places where it was dangerous for African Americans to be seen by white people after dark.
Missouri was alleged to have about 200 sundown towns, Richen's documentary reports. They were mostly located in the Midwest and parts of the northern United States.
"There’s a mythology that racism or segregation was just in the South," Richen said. "There were real threats to African Americans on the road and in places that were everywhere. In some ways, it was harder in the North and the West. In the South, they had the signs (prohibiting black people from entering certain places). In the North and the West, it was just as dangerous, but they didn't have the signs."
More:Missouri State, filmmaker preserve history of women on Route 66
That ugly history includes a Pierce City incident that "Guide to Freedom" recounts. After a lynching in 1901, someone set fire to the homes of Pierce City's black families. They fled.
"That’s some hard history to reckon with," Richen said. "Not only Missouri, but the country needs to reckon with what that meant, and it still lasted until very recently. African Americans did not live in Pierce City."
"Guide to Freedom" also prominently covers Springfield entrepreneur Alberta Ellis, who started listing her Alberta's Hotel in "The Green Book" in the mid-1950s.
A 1956 edition of "The Green Book" includes Alberta's Hotel in a starred listing. Single beds were $3; double beds were $4.
As former News-Leader columnist Sarah Overstreet noted in a March 31, 2002 article, Springfield in the late 1950s was segregated, if not always obviously so.
An 81-year-old man, Phil Roper, gave Overstreet a document he made in 1958, now archived at Missouri State's digital library. It wasn't "The Green Book," but it was a survey of Springfield restaurants and hotels that wouldn't serve black people.
Overstreet found it to be an eye-opening artifact of the Springfield she grew up in. Of 116 establishments on the list, three owned by blacks and 26 owned by whites allowed black customers. The remaining 87 did not.
Ellis is remembered for serving everyone at her hotel, though. Foster, with Missouri State, has researched Ellis's life while working on a book series about Springfield black history with co-author Tim Knapp.
"We feel like (Ellis) was an extremely savvy businesswoman," he said Tuesday. "We’ve had some indication she had a farm, which I think was way cool. It provided some of the food she served there (at the hotel)."
Richen, the documentary director, said she learned about Ellis through a family friend. A lot of "Green Book" information that was inscribed in the guidebook has since spread out through word of mouth and oral history, she said.
Elizabeth Calvin, a granddaughter of Ellis, is interviewed in the documentary and shared recollections of the Springfield businesswoman whom everybody called "Miss Alberta."
"She just was a very straightforward woman," Calvin tells filmmakers. "She was beautiful. I admired her a lot. I used to just watch her."
Calvin loved the way Ellis dressed, the way she interacted with people, the way she could afford to buy things.
"I think she was a woman who was ahead of her time," Calvin said.
Foster, with Missouri State, said the site of Ellis's hotel — at 617 N. Benton Ave., near the Pitts Chapel United Methodist Church — will soon be marked on Springfield's African American Heritage Trail, a project announced by Mayor Ken McClure in June.
"I think of a place like this as almost a refuge, as people eat and sleep there," Foster said. "We plan to honor and recognize the site and that legacy."
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