Access Denied
IMPORTANT! If you’re a store owner, please make sure you have Customer accounts enabled in your Store Admin, as you have customer based locks set up with EasyLockdown app. Enable Customer Accounts
Overground Railroad
The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America
Out of Stock- Regular price
- $34.99
- Sale price
- $34.99
- Regular price
-
- Unit price
- / per
A New York Times Notable Book, Overground Railroad explores the historical role and residual impact of the Green Book, the “Bible of Black Travel”
Published from 1936 to 1967, during the Jim Crow years and into the civil rights movement, when travel for black America was difficult and dangerous, the Green Book was an ingenious solution to a horrific problem. It listed hotels, restaurants, gas stations, stores, nightclubs, and other businesses across the United States that were safe for black people to patronize. Overground Railroad celebrates the stories behind—and contained within—Victor Green’s guide, tracing its history and revealing the contemporary events that helped shape how black people endured and triumphed despite incredible obstacles.
Candacy Taylor drove through the neighborhoods where Green Book sites once thrived. Her work documents the scars that redlining, urban renewal, gentrification, and mass incarceration have left on these communities. Although less than 5 percent of Green Book businesses are still operating, these sites of sanctuary symbolize black ingenuity, resourcefulness, strength, entrepreneurship, and resilience. Overground Railroad tells the untold story of black travel, offering readers a rich opportunity to reexamine America’s story of segregation, black migration, and the rise of the black leisure class.
Published from 1936 to 1967, during the Jim Crow years and into the civil rights movement, when travel for black America was difficult and dangerous, the Green Book was an ingenious solution to a horrific problem. It listed hotels, restaurants, gas stations, stores, nightclubs, and other businesses across the United States that were safe for black people to patronize. Overground Railroad celebrates the stories behind—and contained within—Victor Green’s guide, tracing its history and revealing the contemporary events that helped shape how black people endured and triumphed despite incredible obstacles.
Candacy Taylor drove through the neighborhoods where Green Book sites once thrived. Her work documents the scars that redlining, urban renewal, gentrification, and mass incarceration have left on these communities. Although less than 5 percent of Green Book businesses are still operating, these sites of sanctuary symbolize black ingenuity, resourcefulness, strength, entrepreneurship, and resilience. Overground Railroad tells the untold story of black travel, offering readers a rich opportunity to reexamine America’s story of segregation, black migration, and the rise of the black leisure class.
Extent: 360 pp
Format: Paperback
Publication date: 2026-01-15
Size: 24.2 x 16.6 cm
ISBN: 9781419786211
Praise for Overground Railroad
With passion, conviction, and clarity, [Candacy] Taylor’s book unearths a fascinating and true—if not willfully obscured—history of African American activism and entrepreneurship in the United States. This remarkable study broadens our understanding of black life, leisure, and struggles for equality in twentieth-century America, presents the Green Book as a social movement in response to a crisis in black travel, and makes a compelling case for the need to protect more diverse African American sites that have been heretofore underappreciated.
Executive Director, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund
“…a fascinating history of black travel.. telling the sweeping story of black travel within Jim Crow America across four decades.”
The New York Times Book Review
“In scope and tone, “Overground Railroad” recalls Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns…At its center, the book is a nuanced commentary of how black bodies have been monitored, censured or violated, and it compellingly pulls readers into the current news cycle.”
The Los Angeles Times
“Taylor, previously a Harvard fellow, gives the topic the context and meticulous research it deserves, while keeping an eye on current race relations.”
National Geographic
About the Author
CANDACY TAYLOR is an award-winning author, photographer, and cultural documentarian. Her work has been featured in more than fifty eighty media outlets, including The New Yorker, Newsweek, Oprah, Time Magazine, and the Atlantic. She curated Green Book, a traveling exhibition by the Smithsonian, and has received numerous fellowships and grant awards, including those from the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Park Service, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Taylor has driven more than half a million miles documenting American culture, and after learning about the Green Book, she never looked at travel, or even America, the same way again. Taylor lives in Chicago.
You May Also Like
View more
This product currently has no recommended items.
Sign up to our Newsletter
Our weekly newsletter is a curated collection of interviews, articles, stunning images and books we think you’ll love. Sign up to get 20% off.
In accordance with our privacy policy, you may unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid password
Enter
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.