Route 66’s legacy of racial segregation

Being black and travelling away from home during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the US was potentially life-threatening. It involved a lot of planning, faith and a reliable travel guide called the The Negro Motorist Green Book. Victor H Green, a black postal worker from Harlem, New York, published this annual roadside companion from 1936-1964 and it was distributed by Esso gas stations. Green said he wanted to “give the Negro traveller information that will keep him from running into difficulties and embarrassments”. This book did more than that: it provided life-saving information, which earned it the unofficial title of the Bible of Black Travel.
A 1955 copy of The Negro Travelers' Green Book. A 1955 copy of The Negro Travelers’ Green Book. Photograph: Alamy
The book listed restaurants, hotels, barbershops, beauty parlours, bars, and service stations that were willing to serve black people. These properties were not only powerful symbols of refuge, they were places that provided comfort and shelter in an unsafe world at a shameful time in US history.

The deep south was notorious for lynchings but travel could be even more challenging in western states. Since there were fewer segregation laws in place, many people assume the west was more liberated. But the 1930 census listed 44 of the 89 counties along Route 66 as “sundown towns” – all-white communities that posted signs stating that blacks had to leave by sundown. Most black people travelling in the west avoided small towns and aimed to stay in cities, but found little succour there – only six of the 100 motels that existed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, admitted black people.
The list of Green Book properties in the western US helps shine a different light on the race issue in the country’s history, prompting the National Park Service’s Route 66 Corridor Program to commission me to document the remaining properties along this road.
Today, of the 250 Green Book sites listed in the 1960s along Route 66, over half have gone. Many properties have been levelled, closed or radically modified; others, such as De Anza Motor Lodge in Albuquerque, are seeking funds for redevelopment.
But there are still some in operation. The El Rancho Restaurant and Motel (867 Navajo Blvd) in Holbrook, Arizona, is a solid adobe-coloured brick building with a covered carport and a large L-shaped, two-storey motel in the back. Out front is a classic 1960s sign towering over Route 66, announcing amenities such as “refrigeration,” “TV,” and “Electric he t,” with the “a” falling off the sign. The restaurant serves Mexican, south-western and Native American dishes such as stuffed sopapillas, grilled fajitas and red chille burritos.
Motel Du Beau (19 W Phoenix Ave) in Flagstaff, Arizona, was built in 1927 and was one of the US’s first hostels (with dorms as well as standard rooms). In the 1960s, it had the reputation of being a makeshift brothel with rent-by-the-hour rooms. Another well-known property featured in the Green Book, with a (more tenuous) link to prostitution, is the Las Palmas Hotel (1738 N Las Palmas Ave), Hollywood, which is home to the fire escape where Richard Gere plucks Julia Roberts from life as a call girl in the final scene of Pretty Woman.
Two other Green Book hotels in Los Angeles are the Dunbar (4225 S Central Ave, no longer a hotel) and the Mark Twain (1622 Wilcox St, Hollywood, 001 323 463 2111, no website), which is well known for being a flophouse for struggling artists. When Joe Barbera the animator for Hanna-Barbera (the animation studio that created the likes of Tom and Jerry, the Flintstones and Yogi Bear) stayed at the Mark Twain in 1937 he described it as an “enlightened penitentiary.” Today it maintains its reputation as a low rent motel for struggling actors but during the 1940s and 1950s it offered relatively safe boarding for black people, who had few other options.
Listed in the Green Book as a hair salon and hotel, the Dunbar was much more than that. It was the unofficial country club for the black artistic elite, serving Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, Josephine Baker and Billie Holiday. Today it’s a modest senior-living facility, but the Spanish-style courtyard behind elegant arched entryway evokes a hint of its grand past.
Fred Harvey Houses were a chain of restaurants and hotels, established in 1878 and located along the Santa Fe, Topeka and Atchison railways. Although they were not listed in the Green Book, they did serve black people. There are two that still operate as hotels today. The La Fonda (100 E San Francisco St, Santa Fe, New Mexico) is a pueblo-style landmark hotel with an exquisite courtyard dining area. It was one of the first hotels in America to offer an “Indian Detour” service, which would take visitors to nearby Native American cultural sites. In the 1950 book Masked Gods author Frank Waters referred to Fred Harvey as “the man who introduced Americans to Americans”.
The other Harvey House that served black people during the Jim Crow era and survives as a hotel is the beautifully restored La Posada (303 E 2nd St, Winslow, Arizona), an 11-acre Spanish colonial-style property by renowned early 20th-century architect Mary Colter. La Posada has undergone a $12m renovation, transforming it into a magical place with handmade Mexican tin and tile mirrors, six-foot cast iron tubs, hand woven Zapotec rugs, and hand-painted furniture and tile murals.