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State Project Aims To Document All NC Sites Listed In The Green Book

Listed in "The Green Book", the Magnolia House Motel, built in 1889 as a private resident, was converted to serve as a motel for African Americans traveling in the segregated 50s and 60s in Greensboro, N.C.
Lynn Hey
/
For WUNC
Listed in "The Green Book", the Magnolia House Motel, built in 1889 as a private residence, was converted to serve as a motel for African Americans traveling in the segregated 50s and 60s in Greensboro, N.C.

Live jazz fills the air and strangers become friends as they talk and eat eggs and waffles at the Historic Magnolia House in Greensboro on a recent Sunday.

Evelyn Macomson eats brunch with her son, Donnie, every week. She’s particularly interested in a new display that has the Magnolia House’s listing in the Negro Motorists Green Book.

“I’m going to find some of these places to see if they still exist,” she said. “There’s Martin Street, I know that’s right around the corner.”

But she won’t have to do much research on the sites listed. The North Carolina African American Heritage Commission received a two-year grant to document the sites listed in the book.

The project is called “Green Books’ ‘Oasis Spaces’: African American Travel in North Carolina, 1936-1966.”

During segregation, it was hard for African Americans to know where to travel and still be safe.

Display of people who stayed at the Magnolia House in Greensboro
Credit Lynn Hey / For WUNC
/
For WUNC
Listed in "The Green Book", the Magnolia House Motel, built in 1889 as a private residence, was converted to serve as a motel for African Americans traveling in the segregated 50s and 60s. It is open for events and each Sunday serves a Jazz brunch, in Greensboro, N.C. The display shows off notable African Americans such as Ray Charles, Ike and Tina Turner, James Brown, Jackie Robinson and others who once stayed in the Motel.

When the Negro Motorist Green Book came out in 1936, it listed movie theaters, hotels and barbershops that offered a safe place for them to go. Three hundred and twenty-seven sites in North Carolina were listed in the Green Book.

To date, 66 physical structures are still standing across the state. Of the 66 identified by the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission, four Green Book operations are still in operation: Speight’s Auto Service in Durham, Friendly Barbershop in Durham, Magnolia House in Greensboro, and Dove’s Auto Service in Kinston.

The North Carolina Green Book Project will create traveling exhibits, a web portal, and public programming beginning in March 2020.

The project's research historian Lisa Withers said she wants to give a voice to the past.

“Being able to say these spaces are important, they mattered is really important to this project in addition to the people who lived there,” she said.

A copy of "The Green Book," which listed places that were safe for African Americans to travel to in the 50s and 60s.
Credit Lynn Hey / For WUNC
/
For WUNC
A copy of "The Green Book," which listed places that were safe for African Americans to travel to in the 50s and 60s.

Magnolia House opened its doors as a motel to African Americans in 1949. Guests like Ray Charles, James Brown and Jackie Robinson all stayed there during their travels. In the 1970s it closed its doors and fell into disrepair. Greensboro native Sam Pass bought the home in 1995. It took him roughly 14 years for it to open its doors once more as an event venue.

The house now hosts bridal showers, baby showers, private events and brunch. Pass said it was a special place to the travelers who rested their heads there.

“It meant that they were comfortable. They didn’t have to worry about looking over their backs,” he said. “They didn’t have to worry about the offense of racism. They were home.”

Withers wants to capture the memories that people have from the Green Book. That’s why she and her team are traveling across the state to talk to people who traveled during segregation or remember the sites listed in the Green Book.

“Without the human stories, a building is just a building,” she said. “I think it makes a difference when you start thinking ‘Oh this person was able to send their kids to college, by having this drug store here.’”

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS:

Standing on the roof, Sam Pass says he considered the original architectural details of the historic Magnolia House when he restored the home on Gorrell Street in Greensboro, N.C
Credit Lynn Hey / For WUNC
/
For WUNC
Standing on the roof, Sam Pass says he considered the original architectural details of the historic Magnolia House when he restored the home on Gorrell Street in Greensboro, N.C. The Magnolia House Motel, built in 1889 as a private residence, was converted to serve as a motel for African Americans traveling in the segregated 50s and 60s.

The dining area of Greensboro's Magnolia House Motel, which was built in 1889 and was listed in "The Green Book" as a motel for African Americans traveling in the segregated 50s and 60s.
Credit Lynn Hey / For WUNC
/
For WUNC
The dining area of Greensboro's Magnolia House Motel, which was built in 1889 and was listed in "The Green Book" as a motel for African Americans traveling in the segregated 50s and 60s.
Sam Pass, owner of The Magnolia House on Gorrell Street in Greensboro, shows off an upstairs room he hopes to one day make a bed and breakfast. Pass brought back the historic motel from near destruction.
Credit Lynn Hey / For WUNC
/
For WUNC
Sam Pass, owner of The Magnolia House on Gorrell Street in Greensboro, shows off an upstairs room he hopes to one day make a bed and breakfast. Pass brought back the historic motel from near destruction.

Naomi P. Brown joined WUNC in January 2017.
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