During Jim Crow and even after those laws were overturned in the late 1960s, green book sites were safe places Black Americans could stop at when they were traveling. The sites bear the namesake of what’s known as the Green Book. It contained listings for hotels, restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores and more. Terri Gentry says her grandparents never left home without that book.
“We were traveling around the country, we were out exploring. We wanted to go see family members,” she said. “We felt like as citizens and with the National Park Service, we wanted to start engaging in different places and spaces around the country, but we had to navigate it very differently.”
Gentry is with History Colorado. She and her team are working to register green book sites throughout the state.
For Black History Month, we are listening back to a conversation with Gentry about this chapter of Colorado’s recent past. She sat down with In The NoCo’s Robyn Vincent.
