By Russ McQuaid
When Leon Bates’ grandfather would travel Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Kentucky as an International Representative of the United Auto Workers union in the forties, fifties and sixties, he always carried extra white shirts so he could look fresh coming off the road and a satchel with a pair of important books at his reach.
“He had a large leatherbound Road Atlas and a Green Book,” said Bates. ”When he got to a town, one he hadn’t been to before, he knew where he could possibly find what he needed…meals or somewhere to rest.
”He never traveled without it because he never knew where he was going from one stop to the next.”
As a six-foot-four Black man and a union rep, Bates’ grandfather naturally stood out and attracted attention…some of it the kind a traveler of color wouldn’t always want in a time and a place where Jim Crow laws and customs were still in practice.
”Indiana had its hostile time period, a very unpleasant history that we often don’t talk about but is very prevalent,” said Bates, a local historian who studies the African American experience in Indianapolis. ”It’s bizarre in some ways to think that we actually lived this way, that people had to actually plan their lives around where they could stop and the Green Book fell right in the middle of that.”
The volume’s proper title was, “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” and it advised travelers where they could expect to be welcomed and safe on their journeys across the country.
”The Green Book was a travel guide African Americans used and took in their cars with them when they traveled across the country to tell them where they could find lodging, where they could find a meal, where they could find possible car repairs,” said Bates as he turned the pages of his own Green Book reprint. ”It was made necessary because at the time in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, African Americans were not always welcome in different places because if you got into a different town you didn’t know where you could find hostile business establishments.”
One of those places where persons of color could find a room upon arrival in Indianapolis was the Omni Hotel just a few steps from the front door of Union Station.
”We’re proud to represent all those businesses that were in the Green Book and made significant contribution to inclusivity and made a safe place for black travelers as they were traveling across the country,” said Omni Severin General Manager Steve Quackenbush, who recently led a $24 million renovation of the hotel, dating back to 1913, that sought to replicate the building’s history by highlighting artifacts and décor of the era when train travelers of all races would seek lodging. ”This really positions us at the center point of everything that was happening including civil rights and all the commerce that was happening inside the country.”
Bates said while the Omni catered to anyone who could afford its rates, a nearby Black-founded non-profit housed travelers of lesser means.
