Exploring the Disparity in Green Space Access

Green Book Cleveland is a restorative history project of the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University and Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Victor H. Green’s Green Book guides, published between 1936 and 1966 to help Black motorists find courteous service and avoid harassment or the embarrassment of rejection in their travels, have drawn new interest in recent years in journalism, scholarship, and popular culture.

Green Book Cleveland maps and further documents Northeast Ohio Green Book sites, as well as places that never appeared in any of its 23 national editions. The Green Book never captured the full range of entertainment, leisure, and recreation sites that African Americans enjoyed. Green Book Cleveland seeks to document Black economic life, from restaurants, taverns, and nightclubs to beauty and barber shop and even the garages and service stations that facilitated travel within and beyond Black neighborhoods like Cedar-Central and “surrogate suburbs” like Glenville and Lee-Harvard. These are mostly stories of small business owners and the clienteles they served, but they extend to stories of struggles simply to enjoy fresh air and cool water.

Register by clicking here.

Thanks to our sponsors: Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, The Living Waters Association, The Sauerland Foundation, The Cuyahoga Valley National Park, The Cleveland State University Cleveland Memory Project, The Union Miles Development Corp. and The Community Life Collaborative.