Another Take On Route 66

Earlier this week I attended a lecture at the Scottsdale Library on the Underground and Aboveground Railroads by Dr Tamika Sanders.  It was very well done but since I already knew quite a bit about the Underground Railroad I was particularly interested in the Aboveground version, which turned out to be about the difficulties faced by black travelers right up until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 finally forbid discrimination in private common accommodations like restaurants and hotels.

Before then, black travelers in many areas faced severe restrictions finding hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other services that would allow them.  Dr Sanders focused us on the Negro Motorist Green Book, published from 1936 until the passage of the Civil Rights Act.  The book, published by Victor Hugo Green, provided black travelers with a listing in each state, by city, of facilities they could get access to while on the road.

Coverage by the Green Book was not limited to the former slave states which had instituted formal Jim Crow laws as all across the country, to greater or lesser degrees, blacks could not gain the same access to facilities as whites.  Dr Sanders pointed out that over the years, the number of accommodations open to blacks grew, as she showed us actual pages from various editions, with a focus on the southwest.  The numbers and types of facilities available in Arizona in the 1930s was very limited and must have posed huge obstacles.  Black travelers had to carry enough food because they could not be certain of getting service in restaurants along the way and even had to carry gasoline.

As part of our presentation she showed the video below about Route 66 in those days and the difficulties it posed for black travelers.  The road ran across northern Arizona on its way from Chicago to Los Angeles.

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One note to add to the video.  At around 1:27 it shows a photo in which a person holds a Grand Imperial Wizard for Goldwater sign, a reference to the KKK and obviously from the 1964 presidential campaign.  The Arizona senator voted against the Civil Rights Act, specifically because he believed the federal government lacked constitutional authority to regulate private accommodations.  I think he made the wrong choice, but later that year, after passage of the Act, the Republican Party platform contained these sections:

full implementation and faithful execution of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and all other civil rights statutes, to assure equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by the Constitution to every citizen;

—improvements of civil rights statutes adequate to changing needs of our times;

—such additional administrative or legislative actions as may be required to end the denial, for whatever unlawful reason, of the right to vote;

 This Administration has failed to apply Republican-initiated retraining programs where most needed particularly where they could afford new economic opportunities to Negro citizens.

Though he objected on constitutional grounds to the Act, Barry Goldwater was directly responsible for integrating the Arizona Air National Guard in which he served; helping to finance the NAACP lawsuit seeking to desegregate Phoenix schools; and integrating the U.S. Senate cafeteria by taking his black political aide to lunch.