Which Green Book sites are still standing in Michigan?

Which Green Book sites are still standing in Michigan?

LANSING, Mich. (WOOD) — Travel hasn’t always been easy for African Americans — far from it. That’s why, during an era of segregation, “The Negro Motorist Green Book” became a vital tool to help prevent dangerous, difficult and uncomfortable situations for Black travelers across the U.S.

“Things that we take for granted: ‘Oh yeah, let’s go on a little trip. We’ll find a tourist cabin or a motel to stay in.’ It wasn’t that easy,” said Christine Byron, a historian of Michigan tourism and retired local history librarian. “(African Americans) really needed a travel guide. They needed word of mouth.”

Although she’s not Black, Byron is passionate about keeping African American history alive. She began researching the Green Book more than a decade ago.

“Like so many things related to African American history, people don’t know, and they should know,” Byron said, sitting on the couch in her East Grand Rapids home.

The Green Book, which had slightly different names over the years, was a travel guide for African Americans, published from 1936 to 1966. Its pages listed safe places for Black people during the Jim Crow era.

“The first year only included New York, the second year included Michigan — only Detroit — and then it gradually grew to include the rest of Michigan,” Byron explained. 

There were close to 250 sites in Michigan: businesses like hotels, motels, restaurants, beauty and barber shops, service stations, garages, nightclubs, resorts and beaches.

“There were 97 in Detroit, 44 in Idlewild. For example, in Grand Rapids, there were only two,” Byron said. “But that doesn’t mean that was only two places that welcomed African Americans, just for some reason, they decided not to be in the Green Book. And a lot of the places were word of mouth, you know, too.”

On her dining room table, next to a handful of Green Book reprints, sat an album, filled with photographs of nearly half of the Michigan sites that Byron has collected over the years.

“Unfortunately, a lot of them are not still standing,” Byron said. “People have moved on or, you know, built year-round homes and that kind of thing. So some of the smaller cabins and a few of the motels lasted a little longer. The one in Grand Rapids, unfortunately, didn’t.”

The Southern Kitchen Shack, which once stood near Charles and Logan, and Villa Motor Court on South Division have both long since been demolished.

A photo shows the now-demolished Southern Kitchen Shack. (Courtesy city of Grand Rapids archives)

“There’s (a hotel) in Idlewild that is open, I think just seasonally though,” Byron said.

Perhaps more difficult to come across than the sites themselves are original copies of the book, but the New York Public Library has nearly every edition in its collection. 

“The last time I saw one go up for auction, it was, I want to say, over $10,000,” Byron recalled. “So if people have these in their attics or basements, you know, I’m sure your local library or museum would love to have original copies.”

Byron has spent countless hours in libraries and museums, looking through newspapers, books and other publications to find out as much about these sites as she can. She’s shared her research through presentations for various historical societies. Her extensive knowledge even led the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office to contact her after it was awarded a grant to study the sites last summer.

“Nobody’s really looked at the more rural areas to see how many of these places still exist,” said Katie Kolokithas, survey coordinator for the SHPO.

Since 2016, the office has received around eight grants from the National Park Service to help broaden and increase the amount of African American resources that are listed in and recognized by the state and the federal government. Right now, they’re knee-deep in work, trying to figure out which Michigan Green Book sites are still standing.

“Red are gone and yellow are the ones we’re still trying to hunt down,” said Kolokithas, scrolling through an Excel list on her laptop at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation office in Lansing.

“We’re at somewhere between 50 and 100 that we either don’t know yet or that we’re confident that we know where it is.”

‘A BIG TREASURE HUNT’

Some of these sites are well known by the people in their communities, which makes it easy to get information on them and find out if they still exist. Others, not so much.

“Some of them we have to spend hours and hours and hours in archives, going through historic newspapers, city directories, even deed records, property records, to try to figure out who owned properties when,” Kolokithas explained.

She and her colleague, Nathan Nietering, have come to terms with the fact that some of them might never be found.

“It makes it extra challenging because, especially in the rural areas, there were not addresses. So it always makes us wonder, how did people find these places as they were traveling around? Because it’ll just say route one. Route one is, you know, it’s rural postal routes and they are incredibly difficult to navigate and try to figure out where some of these places were now. Hopefully it was easier historically, but now it makes it very challenging, because there’s not addresses.”

The team is able to utilize historic aerial imagery, of which Michigan has a good deal, which allows them to see what neighborhoods looked like in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.

“We used that extensively in Oakland County to kind of narrow down where we thought there was a former resort standing and we were able to connect with a descendant, and he confirmed that it is still standing. So that was kind of a cool one,” Kolokithas said.

There are others, though, that — unless someone in the state or in the country recognizes the name or is a descendant and contacts SHPO — might remain a mystery.

“History research like this kind of feels like a big treasure hunt, because you’re just trying to follow the next path to try to get you to the information that you need. And sometimes it gets really, really frustrating, and other times you are able to find what you’re looking for and then it’s a really exciting moment.”

WORKING TO BRING AWARENESS

In mid-January, News 8 stopped at three former tourist homes that at one point had been listed in the Green Book to find out if they still existed. The first two were in Battle Creek. The owner of the first property, located on Van Buren Street West, was a middle aged African American man. He said there had previously been another home on the property, but it was torn down approximately five years ago because of its poor condition. He knew a bit about the history of the site and the Green Book, but not enough to speak in an interview.

The person living in the second house on Willow Street said they didn’t know anything about the home’s history.

The former site of a Green Book tourist home on Van Buren Street West in Battle Creek. (Jan. 22, 2025)

Janet Cunningham, who lives in a former tourist home in Three Rivers, said she didn’t know it was a Green Book site until after she moved in.

“I’ve been here since 2009, so I’ve been here 20-something years,” Cunningham told News 8, seated in the recliner of her antique-filled living room.

“After I got it, I had a guy knock on the door and he said, ‘Do you care if we take pictures?’ And I said, ‘For what?'”

The man informed her that her home on the St. Joseph River used to be a “Black man’s resort.”

“Say Black people come in from Chicago or wherever, this was the place they come. They could go out boating and fishing and, you know, recreation,” Cunningham relayed. “I thought it was kind of interesting.”

A former Green Book tourist home in Three Rivers. (Jan. 22, 2025)

Kolokithas said in their research of the sites, property owner knowledge of the Green Book sites has been a mixed bag.

“There’s a lot of property owners that are not aware that this was the history of their property. There are some that are. We’ve encountered a number of folks that are descendants of the original owners of some of these properties and they know all about it and have photos and have brochures from when it was a resort, or whatever it might be. And so that’s been wonderful to get to connect with some of those, and we’re hoping to be able to continue to do that as we continue our research.”

She added that they hope to continue to bring more awareness to this important part of history. 

“We want to be able to have a broad expanse of Michigan history. We want to be able to know as much as we can and recognize a lot of these places. For a number of years, historic preservation as a field concentrated on the big, fancy Victorian mansions and as a field, we really want to broaden what we what we know is important and be able to recognize the impact that those places had on our country and on our state,” Kolokithas said.

When their research is complete, a contractor will photograph and document every property that is still standing. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop a historic context for the state of Michigan about African American recreational tourism, which in turn would create a pathway for property owners that are interested to have their property listed on the National Register. That can open up access to incentives such as grants and tax credits. 

“This will be our first statewide context that we’ve done under these grant programs and so we’re hoping that this sets up a pathway to do this with more topics,” Kolokithas said.

She expects they will wrap up with the project by spring 2027.

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