{"id":16447,"date":"2019-07-24T16:31:15","date_gmt":"2019-07-24T20:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=16447"},"modified":"2020-05-07T10:38:43","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T14:38:43","slug":"the-green-book-maine-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/the-green-book-maine-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Green Book, Maine Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 326px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23fefefe&amp;backgroundColorFullscreen=%23fefefe&amp;d=ja19_flipbook&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=78&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>You\u2019ve seen the film<\/b>, but did you know it was playing up here?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em>By Olivia Gunn Kotsishevskaya and Jake Doolittle<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">July\/August 2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-16475\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/JA19-Green-Book-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"JA19 Green Book\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/JA19-Green-Book-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/JA19-Green-Book-200x134.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/JA19-Green-Book.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>I<\/span><span class=\"s1\">n 1936, with Jim Crow laws shaming our country, <strong>Victor Hugo Green<\/strong>, an African American postal worker in Harlem, courageously compiled a list of homes and inns across the United States that were open to black travelers\u2014<i>including Maine<\/i>. These safe havens would be listed in <em><strong>The Negro Motorist Green-Book<\/strong><\/em>, published annually until 1967. <\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Our Own Backyard<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">Though the South was infamous for its Jim Crow laws, New England states are not left unstained. \u201cIn the movie <i>The <\/i><em>Green Book<\/em>, it\u2019s almost as if they\u2019re living in two different worlds\u2014Dr. Donald Shirley (Mahershala Ali) was living in one world, and Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), driving the car, was in another world,\u201d says civil rights leader and former state legislator <strong>Gerald E. Talbot<\/strong>, who senses the spoken and unspoken sentiments in both worlds. \u201cI\u2019m what you call a light-skin black man. The neighborhood I come from is a black neighborhood. When I moved from Bangor to Portland, I had a job cooking. I worked here for maybe a week when the manager finally asked me, \u2018What are you, anyway?\u2019 I said, \u2018I\u2019m African American.\u2019 The next week, I didn\u2019t have a job.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Word of Mouth <\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">The first edition of the <em>Green Book<\/em> named six Maine locations, including <strong>Rose Cummings\u2019 Old Orchard Beach home at 110 Portland Avenue<\/strong>. The names of <strong>Duke Ellington<\/strong>, <strong>Count Basie<\/strong>, Harlem Renaissance poet <strong>Countee Cullen<\/strong>, <strong>Cab Calloway<\/strong>, and <strong>Lionel Hampton<\/strong> can be found in the registry. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">In <i>Maine\u2019s Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People<\/i> by co-authors Gerald E. Talbot and H.H. Price, Talbot writes, \u201cThe blacks who came to southern Maine in the summertime, either as entertainers or for their own vacations and refreshment, stayed at black-owned establishments. During the first part of the twentieth century, Rosvell \u201cRose\u201d Emerson Cummings ran her business, <strong>The Homestead<\/strong>, at Old Orchard Beach for a roster of now-famous guests\u2026\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Great Minds<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cR<\/span><span class=\"s1\">ose was very wise,\u201d says LeVonne Harris, her granddaughter. \u201cShe was also a good business person, and she was very committed to it. The people who came, everybody knew each other. When they\u2019d sit down in the dining room, it was like one great big family.\u201d The family had heard that the home was listed in the <em>Green Book<\/em>, but it wasn\u2019t a \u201cwalk-in place,\u201d says Harris. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI can recall <strong>John Hope Franklin<\/strong>, a professor at Duke University. He wrote several volumes of books on black history. He and his wife would occasionally come up here. My uncle graduated from Bates, and he would send his classmates to my grandmother\u2019s. <strong>W.E.B. Du Bois<\/strong>, who\u2019s in the history books for his controversial ideas on government, he came up one summer.\u201d (See \u201cThe W.E.B. Du Bois Files,\u201d February\/March 2014.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">In 2004, the Cummings\u2019s home was included on the National Register of Historic Places. Today the registry of guests from 1923 to 1993 is part of the African American Collections of Maine at the University of Southern Maine.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Leave the Light On<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">On an unassuming street off of St. John in Portland sits a 1900s four-unit, cream, shingled home. Before World War II, the <strong>Green Lantern<\/strong> operated on the first floor of <strong>28 A Street, the Thomas House<\/strong>, across from Portland\u2019s former Union Station.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cThere was a little green lantern underneath the bay window by the door, that was lit up even in winter or if it was stormy,\u201d writes <strong>Norma McIlvaine Readdy<\/strong>, niece of owners <strong>Ben<\/strong> and <strong>Edie Thomas<\/strong>. Readdy describes the home\u2019s story in detail in <i>Maine\u2019s Visible Black History<\/i>. As a girl, she lived at the home with her aunt, uncle, and grandmother. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">Directly across from Union Station, the Green Lantern provided board for black sailors and soldiers. \u201cThere was no USO, no place for black sailors to go to play the jukebox or get together,\u201d writes Readdy. \u201cThey could go down to the corner store and buy beer and bring it back to the Green Lantern Grill,\u201d where soldiers and sailors could join trainmen, chefs, and \u201cprizefighters\u201d at the long table, play cards, and listen to music. The Thomases would go on to open the Marian Anderson USO Center in Portland, which stemmed from the Colored Community Center founded in the early 1940s.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Water\u2019s Edge<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">Overlooking the St. Croix River with Canada\u2019s border in the distance, <strong>Brooks Bluff Cottages<\/strong> was owned by <strong>Ernie Brown<\/strong>, since deceased, in 1920. Located in Robbinston, the cottages were listed in the <em>Green Book<\/em> as being \u201cjust 12 miles east of Calais.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\">\u201c<strong>The John Nehemiah Brewer House<\/strong> in Robbinston, still standing and occupied, is one of the definite Underground Railroad safe places in Maine,\u201d says <strong>H.H. Price<\/strong>, co-author of <i>Maine\u2019s Visible Black History<\/i>. <strong>The H.H. Price Collection on the Underground Railroad in Maine<\/strong> is archived at the Special Collections of the Bangor Public Library. \u201cIt\u2019s directly across the St. Croix River from St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada, where there is a traditional black community with old burial sites. In 1997, Dr. John W. Miner, in his 90s and of nearby Calais, gave a sworn statement about the Brewer House to Ms. Frances M. Raye of The Border Historical Society in Eastport (also nearby) about when he was a boy. John was visiting his grandparents in Nova Scotia, and he heard directly from an old African man that he and other runaways from slavery hid in the Brewer House\u2019s attic for days until they were ferried at nighttime across the river to Canada, where they would be free.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cOne of the Maine routes runaways used in the mid-1800s to reach Canada was an old Indian trail, what we now call \u201cThe Airline\u201d (Route 9), from the area of Brewer to Calais. I am not surprised at the <em>Green Book<\/em> listing in Robbinston 100 years later.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Rock Steady<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">At the <strong>National Museum of African American History &amp; Culture<\/strong><b>,<\/b> you\u2019ll find a boulder with the words <b>\u201cRock Rest\u201d<\/b> (below) painted in white. It was once one of two placed at the colorful, flowered entrance of <b>Hazel<\/b> and <b>Clayton Sinclair\u2019s<\/b> Kittery farmhouse. Here, from the 1940s through the 1970s, the Sinclairs welcomed African American vacationers. For two summers as a teen, <strong>Valerie Cunningham<\/strong>, founder of the <strong>Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail <\/strong>(PBHT), worked for the Sinclairs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI referred to them as aunt and uncle,\u201d Cunningham says. \u201cIt was a very small operation. The reason they didn\u2019t advertise [in the <em>Green Book<\/em>] was because their clientele found out by word of mouth.\u201d But they did have their own copy, which was found during restoration efforts when PBHT was entrusted by Clayton Sinclair Jr. to \u201cpreserve the memorabilia\u201d in the home and find the right buyer to \u201cprotect the historic landmark.\u201d The right buyer did come along and restored the nineteenth-century cape along with Clayton Sinclair\u2019s additions. Today, much of the memorabilia can be found at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s1\">M<\/span><span class=\"s1\">aine\u2019s summers weren\u2019t the only draw for guests of Rock Rest. \u201c[Hazel\u2019s] cooking was part of the attraction,\u201d says Cunningham. \u201cDuring the day, if the weather was nice enough, guests would be gone. They\u2019d be tourists, but they had their breakfast and dinner meals at Rock Rest. They couldn\u2019t just walk into any place. The smaller cafes and soda fountain shops\u2014they usually weren\u2019t a problem. It was the more formal, upscale places.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">According to the<strong> Maine Historic Preservation Commission\u2019s <\/strong>2007 National Register of Historic Places\u2019 nomination of Rock Rest, \u201cMuch of this discrimination was hush-hush, but one blatant incident made the newspapers in 1962\u2026\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">Golden Globe-winning actress <strong>Claudia McNeil<\/strong> was starring in the Kennebunkport Playhouse\u2019s production of <em>Raisin in the Sun<\/em> (she\u2019d already starred in the Broadway and Hollywood productions). According to an article in Connecticut\u2019s <i>Bridgeport Telegram<\/i>, Robert Currier, owner of the playhouse, was told by seven local hotels that they would not accommodate McNeil. The nomination continues, \u201cAfter the initial report, one innkeeper wrote a letter to the editor in which he pridefully proclaimed his prejudicial intent not to provide rooms for African Americans. After several further news articles, the State Attorney General\u2019s office investigated the event, but later declined to pursue court action, stating that the state\u2019s anti-discrimination laws had not been breached!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">As for the film itself, Cunningham says, \u201cIt was okay, but it gave the impression that the [<em>Green Book<\/em> locations] were all joints\u2026It perpetuates some of the mythology of who black people are. There\u2019s always been a middle class of black people who were and are educated and middle class. It\u2019s a matter of miseducation. One of the reasons we are still having problems today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\"> \u201cI grew up here,\u201d Cunningham says. \u201c[Portsmouth] is my home town. I graduated in 1959. I had classmates say, \u2018Well, we didn\u2019t have any problems, did we, Valerie?\u2019 And I\u2019d say, \u2018Well, you did not\u2014because you didn\u2019t have to think about it.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Legacies<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s1\">O<\/span><span class=\"s1\">f the Portland locations listed throughout the <em>Green Book\u2019s<\/em> publication, two others still stand. Steps from Portland\u2019s St. Lawrence Arts theater, on the corner of Munjoy Street, is 84 Congress Street., listed as being owned by <strong>Mrs. E.D. Richey <\/strong>in the <em>Green Book<\/em>. According to the tax assessor\u2019s office, the home was built in 1920. In East Bayside at 38 Smith Street, an 1840 three-unit building belonged to a <strong>Mrs. C. Harris<\/strong>. And today, where <strong>Mrs. Martin\u2019s<\/strong> home at 79 Oxford Street once stood, exists the Oxford Street Shelter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201c[The film <i>The <\/i><em>Green Book<\/em>] introduced a lot of people to a subject matter that a lot of people didn\u2019t know existed,\u201d says <strong>Pamela Cummings<\/strong>, director of the restoration committee at the <strong>Abyssinian Meeting House<\/strong>. \u201cWe knew that segregation existed, but many didn\u2019t know to what extent. It\u2019s a learning tool from our past that we should use to avoid the same thing happening now or in the future.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">Green writes in the introduction of his 1949 edition, \u201cThere will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States.\u201d The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, and the last edition of the <em>Green Book<\/em> was published in 1967. It contained 100 pages spanning from the 50 states to Africa, Europe, and South America.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maine was in the books.<br \/>\nBy Olivia Gunn Kostishevskaya and Jake Doolittle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[420,419,418,127,412,323,160,322,417],"class_list":["post-16447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-african-american-history","tag-black-history","tag-history","tag-maine","tag-maine-history","tag-portland-magazine","tag-portland-maine","tag-portland-monthly","tag-the-green-book"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16447"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18660,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16447\/revisions\/18660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}