‘Green-Book’ safe passage route included Washington
Courtesy of New York Public Library
The cover of the 1940 edition of the Green-Book used by black travelers.
Mike Jones/Observer-Reporter
A barn that was destroyed by fire on the site of the present-day Frankie I’s in North Strabane Township was once the location of a jazz club and hotel listed in the “Negro Motorist Green-Book.”
Jean Anderson said nothing was written down when she was growing up in Washington about local businesses that didn’t cater to black people.
“There were places you just knew you didn’t go there,” said Anderson, 76, a retired Washington County 911 supervisor.
She never heard about the “Negro Motorist Green-Book” until the 2019 Oscar-winning movie “Green Book” was released last year about a publication that listed places were black travelers could find safe passage.
“It’s a wonderful movie,” Anderson said two weeks ago while attending a Black History Month program at a senior center in Washington.
The movie was based on the true-life story of an African-American classical pianist, Dr. Don Shirley, who hired a white bodyguard and driver to escort him on a concert tour of the South in the early 1960s. The “Green-Book,” which was published by New York postal worker Victor Hugo Green, was a directory of black-friendly places, including restaurants, hotels or boarding houses, barbershops and jazz clubs in the era of segregation.
As a result of the movie’s appeal, several local residents have been discovering that Washington, which once had a vibrant black-owned business community, had many listings in the book, which was published annually from the 1930s to the 1960s.
“That was when the black community was thriving,” said Joyce Ellis, executive director of the LeMoyne Community Center in East Washington.
Ellis said much of that community in an area known as The Hill has been demolished over the years because of urban renewal, to build a housing project or to expand the Washington & Jefferson College campus.
“There was a lot of hurt,” Ellis said.
She said when she was a girl and traveling with her parents to visit relatives in Ohio “there were only a few places that we could stop at.”
“That’s crazy that that was in my time,” Ellis said.
One of the listings in the book relating to the Washington area was a jazz club named Harley’s Mapleview Hotel in a barn that would become known years later as Frankie I’s on Route 19 in North Strabane Township. The barn burned down in January 2012, and a new restaurant was built in its place.
James Harley, whose father built the hotel, provided an oral history before he died as part of a 2010 project at W&J designed to collect more information about black history in Washington County.
He said his father, George Harley, purchased a 168-acre farm with the intention of establishing a business that would serve the black community. The idea spread to the construction of a hotel for customers who otherwise would have slept in their cars while pausing in the area. His father also had purchased a subscription to the “Green-Book,” which was published annually.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the jazz club was largely supported financially by white W&J students, said college professor W. Thomas Mainwaring, who oversaw the oral history project along with the Washington County History & Landmarks Foundation.
Sandy Mansmann, who worked on the project for the foundation, said they wanted to collect stories from local black residents before what they had to say became lost to time.
“No one was asking for their stories,” Mansmann said. “I think it’s very important for us to know.”
Another local business that was listed in the book until the 1940s was the Dreamland Inn Nightclub. The book lists it as having been on Hallam Avenue in Washington, while an old postcard shows its location on Route 40, two miles west of the city in Buffalo Township.
In Washington, there was safe lodging at Jimmie Fishers Hotel, 120 East Chestnut St., and the Booker T. Washington tourist home at 32 N. College St. Those buildings are no longer standing.
East Chestnut Street in Washington also was home to the black-owned T. Wheeler and J. Baker barbershops in buildings that have been erased from the landscape.
Hazel Lewis of Washington said most white business owners “didn’t do a good job of treating black people.”
“After graduating from high school you couldn’t get a good job. You had to do dishes or clean houses,” said Lewis, who also attended the Black History Month program at the senior center.
“We’ve really come a long way,” she said.
But, Anderson said, she’s never forgotten the local segregation-era businesses that refused black people, and she still can’t financially support them.