Route 66 conjures up nostalgic memories for many white's of a certain age in the United States. Television, print, and other media often invoke the highway as a symbol of freedom in a simpler time. For black Americans of that time, memories of traveling Route 66 are likely to evoke different symbols, as summed up by music legend Aretha Franklin's brother Cecil in the June 28, 1968 Time Magazine profile on Soul music.
"Driving eight or ten hours trying to make a gig, and becoming hungry and passing restaurants all along the road, and having to go off the highway into some little city to find a place to eat because you're black - that had its effect."
Discrimination endured by African-Americans travelers along Route 66 is one of the topics National Park Service historian Frank Norris will cover October 22 at the Route 66 Miles of Possibility Conference in Bloomington-Normal. He'll also talk about the infrastructure that catered to African-American travelers that grew out of that discrimination, and the strategies for finding those accommodations.
“For instance, when going through Illinois, most black families recognized if they were looking for a place to eat or sleep, they needed to seek out the black sections of the towns there were driving through” said Norris.
In Illinois, those towns included Bloomington and Springfield. Norris said blacks would query friends and relatives about those welcoming places before they set out on Route 66 and other highways.
“Or better yet, there was a widely known guidebook called ‘The Negro Motorist Green Book’” said Norris. “Or later, 'The Negro Travelers Green Book' in which there was a listing of all the places in each town, including hotels and restaurants, that would welcome black travelers.”
Norris said he's identified roughly 300 building along Route 66 listed in one of the Green Book directories that were standing from the early 1930’s through the middle 1960’s. Of those, he guessed about 75-80 are still standing, with conditions ranging from “excellent from being restored” to those he characterized as “deplorable.”
Beginning with the creation of Route 66 in 1926 and ending with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1965, traveling along U.S. highways for African-Americans and other minorities was much more of an ordeal than for white travelers. Often, meticulous planning went into the trip to discern hotels, restaurants, and gas stations that would welcome their business. This could mean breaking up an 800 mile drive into 2 unequal days of 200 and 600 miles because there were no accommodations for blacks for 600 miles of that drive. And it wasn’t just the south where blacks experienced hostility while traveling.
“For example, a legislator named John Thomas, a black gentleman from the Chicago area, was an Illinois legislator in 1885” said Norris. “He pushed through a bill that prevented hotel, restaurants, and other public accommodations from discriminating against citizens. States outside the south had these laws preventing discrimination, but they were completely ignored. In Illinois, California, and many other places right up through the post-World War II period, people were not penalized at all or given a small slap on the wrist if they knowingly denied entrance to people to their accommodations or restaurants.”
Norris said as a historian for the National Park Service, it's rewarding to him both professionally and personally to present a more complete history of Route 66.
“When people tell the story of Route 66 it’s almost universally seen as a ‘white’ experience” said Norris. “So recognizing there were thousands of blacks that traveled the road too, I felt it was important to see Route 66 from a different point of view.”
