When we look at a Green Book listing, it can be easy to see only an address.

A business name. A street. A city.

But behind every address was a story.

There was a business owner who made the decision to open a space. There were employees who helped keep it running. There were travelers who relied on it. And there was a community that gave that place meaning.

The Negro Motorist Green Book is often remembered for helping Black travelers navigate segregation. But its pages also reveal something else: a thriving network of Black entrepreneurship.

Hotels, restaurants, tourist homes, gas stations, beauty salons, barbershops, nightclubs, and other businesses appeared throughout its pages.

These businesses helped make travel possible. But they also served purposes beyond travel.

A restaurant could become a gathering place. A hotel could provide employment and a place to connect. A beauty salon or barbershop could become a space where information was exchanged and community relationships were strengthened.

A business could be both an economic enterprise and a community institution.

That distinction matters.

When we look at the Green Book today, we often focus on the locations themselves. But I find myself asking different questions.

Who owned this business?

Why did they open it?

Who worked there?

Who visited?

What did this place mean to the people who lived nearby?

And perhaps most importantly, what happened beyond the address?

These questions move us from simply identifying a Green Book location to understanding its place within a larger community.

The address becomes a starting point rather than the end of the story.

Black entrepreneurship during the Jim Crow era was about more than earning a living. For many business owners, creating a successful business could mean creating opportunities for others, supporting families, providing employment, and investing in their communities.

Some businesses became gathering spaces. Others became landmarks within their neighborhoods. Some remained in families for generations, while others disappeared when circumstances changed.

Even when the physical business no longer exists, its impact can remain through photographs, advertisements, oral histories, family memories, and archival records.

That is part of what makes these stories so important.

The Green Book preserved names and addresses.

But behind those names and addresses were people creating something.

When we begin looking beyond the address, individual Green Book listings start to form a larger landscape.

A restaurant becomes part of a network of Black businesses.

A hotel becomes part of a travel route.

A gas station becomes part of someone's journey.

A nightclub becomes part of a community's social life.

A business becomes part of a legacy.

And when we map those places, we begin to see connections that a single listing cannot show us.

This is one of the questions that continues to guide my own work with the Green Book and my living exhibit project, Mapping Movement: Green Book Landscapes of the Carolinas.

I am interested in what happens when we move beyond the address and begin asking what these places meant to the people and communities connected to them.

Because the Green Book was never just a list of places.

It was a record of movement, entrepreneurship, community, and possibility.

And behind every address was a story waiting to be explored.

Dr. Justice Briscoe
Public Historian

Image Credits:

Figure 1. The Negro Travelers' Green Book: The Guide to Travel & Vacations 1954 Courtesy of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.

Figure 2: Holman's Barbershop 2128 Gervais Street, Columbia, South Carolina. Photograph by Dr. Justice Briscoe, 2023

Figure 3: Holman's Barbershop 2128 & 2128½ Gervais Street, Columbia, South Carolina. Photograph by Dr. Justice Briscoe, 2023