October 28, 2024
Vashon Jordan Jr./Sipa USA
The Green Book Walking Tour on Saturday, Nov. 9, includes about 15 Philadelphia sites once listed in the 'Negro Motorists Green Book,' above, which once was used by Black Americans to find safe places to eat and sleep.
Racial discrimination was not limited to the Jim Crowe laws of the South in the early 1900s. It was present in Philadelphia, too – just not quite so openly.
"In the South, you would have colored only, whites only, so you had the visible signs of discrimination," said Faye Anderson, who runs All That Philly Jazz, a project dedicated to telling and preserving the history of jazz in Philadelphia. "Whereas in the North, you did not have those signs, but it was discrimination nevertheless."
Many Black people, particularly when traveling, relied on "The Negro Motorist Green Book," as depicted in the 2018 movie "Green Book." Published from 1936 to 1966 and created by Harlem postal worker Victor Green, the book listed hotels, restaurants, night clubs, beauty parlors and barber shops considered safe spaces for the Black community.
On Saturday, Nov. 9, All That Philly Jazz will host a Green Book Walking Tour that includes about 15 stops at Center City and South Philadelphia sites once listed in the publication. They include high-end hotels and other establishments that weren't reflected in the movie.
"If you just saw the movie, you would think the Green Book listings were greasy spoons and run-down hotels," Anderson said. "But in Philadelphia, as in cities across the country, you had luxury hotels listed in the Green Book, you had first-class restaurants."
The tour includes hotels where jazz legend Billie Holiday spent the night and the Warwick Hotel, where the Brooklyn Dodgers began staying after Jackie Robinson joined the baseball team, because the team's previous hotel, the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, rejected them. Other sites include a political club made for the "best and richest men of color in the city," a club where jazz musicians John Coltrane and Grover Washington Jr. recorded live albums and Mother Church of Black Catholics — the headquarters of one of the first unions for African American workers.
According to Anderson, dozens of Philadelphia businesses were included in the Green Book over the years and largely clustered in South Philadelphia.
"It's amazing the extent to which Black presence has been erased in South Philly," Anderson said. "So, it really is to fill in the gap in terms of Black history in Philadelphia."
The route is 0.7 miles long and takes two hours to complete. The tour kicks off at 10 a.m. at the Bessie Smith Walk of Fame plaque near the entrance to the Bellevue Hotel on Broad Street and ends at the Universal Institute Charter School, the former site of the Attucks Hotel.
Saturday, Nov. 9
10 a.m | $25
The Bellevue Hotel, 200 S. Broad St.
