Green Book
2019; Oxford University Press; Volume: 106; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/jahist/jaz666
ISSN1945-2314
Autores ResumoAfter years of relative obscurity, The Negro Motorist Green Book, also known as The Negro Travelers' Green Book or simply The Green Book, has suddenly emerged as a cinematic staple. In February 2019 the Smithsonian Channel released The Green Book: Guide to Freedom, a sixty-minute documentary directed by Yoruba Richen about African American travelers combating segregation in the mid-twentieth century. In 2020 Pbs plans to broadcast Driving while Black, a documentary by Ric Burns for Steeplechase Films on a similar topic. And Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Becky Wible Searles have conducted some thirty interviews for The Green Book Chronicles, a one-hour documentary still to be released. Meanwhile, the Hollywood feature film titled Green Book received no less than three Academy Awards in February 2019: best picture, best original screenplay, and best supporting actor for Mahershala Ali playing the pianist Don Shirley (1927–2013). Of these four films, the Hollywood Green Book is the one that, not surprisingly, pays the least attention to The Green Book itself—or more precisely to the series of books published annually from 1936 to 1966 to help African Americans more easily find lodging, meals, and other amenities while traveling in segregated areas throughout North America. The book appears in only a few scenes, and in one early close-up, viewers can see that the filmmakers have even mistakenly pluralized the title as The Negro Motorists' Green Book. The filmmakers also err in having two white characters use the phrase “traveling while black” to describe the types of situations in which The Green Book might be used. “Traveling while black” and its better-known companion phrase “driving while black” were not part of white vocabulary in the early 1960s, when the film is set. Moreover, the hotels listed in The Green Book were generally more upscale than the ones depicted in the film.
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