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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class A production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy Wilson. And I'm Holly Fine. We have an interview today.

We were connected to the folks that Macmillan podcasts about their new show, which is called Driving the Green Book. It is hosted by Alvin Hall, who took a road trip from Detroit to New Orleans, along with associate producer Ginny Woods Weber.

They documented this trip and the places they went and the people they talked to and the stories they told in a 10 part series. That's all about the Negro Motorist Green Book. The first five episodes are out now and new episodes come out on Tuesdays. Tracey, talk to Alvin and Jenny about their thoughts and experiences with the Negro Motorists Green Book and their road trip and the podcast itself.

And we're sharing that interview with you today.

I'm here today with Alvin Hall and Ginny Woods Webber, and we're going to talk about their new podcast, Driving the Green Book. Alvin, as the host and Jinney, you are the associate producer, correct? Yes. Yeah. So the Negro Motorist Green Book, which later became known as the Negro Traveler's Green Book, was really the most well-known guide for black travelers before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations. So Victor Hugo Green, who was a letter carrier, started this guide in 1936 and was inspired in part by similar guides that were meant for Jewish travelers and just travel guides in general for this podcast.

Alvin and Jenny went on a road trip last year from Detroit to New Orleans and interviewed people who used the Green Book in their own lives, that they talked about their own experiences then and now. Alvin and Jenny, I am so happy that you're here with me today. And I'm also so glad that you've created this podcast. I have really wanted to talk about the Green Book on our show for years, and I had a hard time figuring out a great approach to it.

And the approach that you have chosen is really fantastic because you're not only talking to real people about the real experiences, you've also just taken a broader look at the Green Book more as a time capsule. So beyond giving people a resource for safe places to do things like deal with car trouble or get a bite to eat, also, you know, having a document of what the world was like over these decades. And I also wanted to talk to both of you together today because you went on this trip together, which I also love.

So welcome to both of you. Thank you.

Thank you.

First, starting with Alvin, could each of you tell us just a little about your background and what drew you to this project in 2015?

I was approached by a guy at the BBC who had read an article about the Green Book and thought this should be a program about it. I had also read an article about the Green Book and had been thinking about it at the same time. And as a result, we created an earlier version of this book, completely different for the BBC called The Green Book. I had been working on and off from the BBC since about 1997 when I started there creating personal finance programs.

So in the UK I had done Investing for All with Alvin Hall and my landmark series, Your Money or Your Life, which was a reality show about money. When that ended, I started to do more cultural programming around things like Who Sold the soul, intellectual property and African-American music, Jay Z from Brooklyn to the boardroom. And that eventually led to the Green Book.

That's great. How about you today? What what brought you to this project as a biracial black woman who was raised in New England by a white mother? I have always been on a quest to discover my black my African American heritage. And this is in part fueled not only by my desire to know about my ancestors and to understand my place in our country and in our history, but also by the decade of work that I have done fighting for the liberation of black people and other people of color.

I've been active in the Moral Monday movements in the Black Lives Matter movement. I'm an activist. I also work for a family foundation where we focus on equity and education, which means taking a very explicit look at the ways racism and poverty impacted the educational outcomes and opportunities for children, in particular black children and other children of color.

So the Green Book started out focused just on the New York City area, particularly around Harlem, primarily for services that a motorist would need on the road. So like auto mechanics, a place to get a bite to eat. Can you tell us about how it expanded? From there, yes, Victor gradually realized that people were traveling further and further across America, so first he expanded it all the way down to Florida and up to the Mississippi River because that was easy for him to access.

He gathered the information from fellow policemen who were in the same union at the time. He was a postman. There were black policemen union and a white policeman union. And so the black postman would know the places that had the best food, that had clean accommodations, where you could get all of the services you need when you travel. So Victor collected all of that first of going up to the Mississippi. And then quickly after that, he expanded it across the US.

He would advertise in the Green Book that if you wanted to replace list that there, give them a call. And he also hired agents at some point who would also go out and visit the places, confirm them and recommend that they advertise in the Green Book. So it gradually became a picture of America and a changing America at that time.

I knew that he was a letter carrier and I didn't realize that he had relied on the other members of his union to to build out the Green Book. There is so much fascinating information and the episodes of your show that are out, so far as I've heard, were recording. There are four out unless one came out today, though.

They come out every Tuesday, they come out every Tuesday. So there are four out now. And they have talked about things like entrepreneurship is just referenced, how the Green Book connects to some really thriving black neighborhoods. One that you talked about and visited was the noticed little Harlem in Jackson, Mississippi, as you were making all of these connections. Was there anything that you discovered that really surprised you?

Absolutely. I, for one, was incredibly surprised in a gratifying sort of way to learn about the entrepreneurship of black women. I have commented on this numerous times to Alvin while we were in the process of going on this road trip, while we were perusing copies of the Green Book. And since then, as we've been sharing these stories about our time on the road, because for me, growing up, what I was taught, the history that I was taught was that black women are history in this country started as enslaved people or we were domestics.

I did not know that black women were the economic backbone of many black communities. They ran boarding houses, they ran hotels, they ran restaurants. And oftentimes because of racism, white men, white businessmen and communities would not want to do business with black men. So they would instead speak with the black women, which I found to be a very interesting situation, considering what we know now about feminism in business and how men in general don't deal with women.

But to understand that there was a time when black women were really at the forefront of economic activity, especially in the south, was an eye opener for me.

How about you, Alvin?

For me, it was the resilience that we saw again and again. People would tell us the most horrific stories, has the story in Episode one about he and his brother sitting in the car watching their father be demeaned by sheriffs when they go to the house to collect his beeves paycheck to think about the collateral damage of that situation, him, his brother, the mother sitting in the car, but also to think about how he when he tells that story, he doesn't tell it as a negative, totally, but he tells it it's something they survive.

They learn from it, then use that knowledge later on when he was stopped again and he passed that on to the next generation so that they could survive. We heard the story of survival and optimism in the face of really dangerous situations again and again. And what fascinated me and what I took away from it is that we as African-Americans have some place in us this well of optimism, resilience and the belief that we can make our futures better. That's really lovely.

There was a moment and I don't I don't remember the specifics, but there was a moment. And one of the episodes that I was listening to, one of the people you were talking to was telling a story.

And it was like everyone in the room laughed so joyfully alive. I felt almost like I was intruding on someone else's private gathering.

And it really speaks to what you were just talking about.

In this next segment of the interview, Tracey talks with Alvin and Jenny about how their own experiences on the road mirrored the experiences of some of the people they interviewed. But before we get into that, we're going to pause and have a sponsor break. In this uncertain and turbulent time, it's helpful to reflect on a historical past, to understand how it can inform our present in our election special two part series of personality, we're digging into the life and legacy of Joe McCarthy.

It's a sort of scary triumvirate.

If you add natural talent, the ambition that drives you to do something that's going to put you in the limelight and the willingness to do anything, including embellish or outright lie to get you where you want it to go.

Want to understand what really made Joe McCarthy tick and in turn would affect his psyche had on Americans of the Day. Take a listen to this new two part personality election special and all of our other episodes on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Victor Greene talked about how he really hope that one day the Green Book would not be necessary anymore, and unfortunately, he did not live to see that day because he died in 1960.

His wife, Alma, had been working on the Green Book with him. She took over managing it. She later passed it on to others. And it the last edition came out in nineteen sixty six. So that was after the Civil Rights Act was in effect. But I mean, it's clear today that travel still is not nearly as safe for black travelers as it is for white travelers. Was that something that influenced the trip as you were planning to go on it for the show?

Absolutely. One hundred percent in some more overt ways. For example, Alvin and I made plans to drive explicitly only during daylight. We were not interested in attempting any sort of negative fate by driving on foreign southern roads that we weren't familiar with at night. And also something that we had never talked about, but that we did quite naturally was I drove almost the whole way more than 12 miles, because we both know a black man at the wheel of a nice car can attract the attention of unwanted scrutiny.

And we simply didn't want to deal with that. And we never had a conversation about it. But we had an implicit understanding that that's how we would operate on the road. Yes.

And I think that's something that was really powerful. Looking back on the trip that Jenny and I, who have been friends a long time, we knew there were things that we just understood between the two of us. It was like we had this radar.

We didn't need to say it. Because we both understood what was happening, even sometimes during the interviews, people would start to say things and we would both look at each other and we knew just to stop and let them continue talking because what they were about to share with us was coming from a place of trust, a place of just belief that we understood it and our road trip. And often these were stories about things that happened on the road and they would end and there would be this moment of silence because the three of us in the room understood that.

I should have asked earlier how the two of you met and started working together. We've known each other a long time so they could tell the story. It's been a hot minute.

I mean that because Alvin is a writer, a very gifted writer, and was working on a book with my father in law. And I met Alvin one day when he came to my father in law's office to do some work. We started talking, we hit it off, and we have been laughing and sharing stories ever since. And that was probably about 20 years ago.

And meals, let's not forget the love of food. That's true.

We have a shared love of good food, good music, good conversation.

That sounds like like a two thousand mile trip. That's a long trip to take together. And as someone who also travels for my job, sometimes having somebody that I know well that I trust that I like have a positive companionship with makes it so much more of a joy.

Even though travel can be challenging being in the car, it was a joy. But it was also a time for both of us to reflect on interviews, we had just had thoughts. We were having personal reflections. I often think that the conversations we had in the car would make their own podcast because they're really about the two of us as friends, the two of us dealing with our background, thinking about what we had learned and thinking about the passage of time connecting the stories we had just heard to contemporary events.

So it was really good.

I appreciate, Alvin, what you said about the passage of time, because I think that notion of time is part of the magic of what makes this podcast so special, not just because in this time we're looking back and reflecting on what it was like for African-Americans to use the Green Book 30, 40 years ago, understanding that so much has changed in that period of time, but that we're also facing so many of the challenges, but also thinking about the different orientations that Alvin and I have to that passage of time, because we are of different generations.

We've been friends for a couple of decades now, but Alvin and I are not part of the same generation. And I had a much different experience growing up. I was born in the post civil rights era world, whereas Alvin grew up during the civil rights era and the ways that we related to the stories that we're being told, we're quite different for Alvin. I do think for you it was like a true homecoming when you heard some of these stories, whereas for me it was a revelation.

It was an opportunity for me to be introduced to the elders and their wisdom that I never knew because I did not have the privilege of growing up with African-American elders in my family. And so we just had a very different response to what we heard. And I think that that really shines through in the way that these stories ultimately were told.

For me, the stories were often deeply penetrating and I had no barriers to them. I just couldn't there were like going back into my own past. They were like feeling relatives in the room who had died decades ago. It was like living in the moment when you got the right to vote and all of a sudden everybody was cheering. All of that was ever present for me. Emotions were very present in this podcast. There was a lot of laughter.

But there were also moments when we would look at each other across the table and there would be tears in folks eyes and we would simply look at one another and share that understanding, that knowledge that even though we are of different generations, we're from different parts of the country, we still have a shared experience around our history. Around segregation and racism in this country, it was just something that the two of you talked to each other about during that car time, or was it more of introspective?

A bit of both. Sometimes you didn't need to say anything, and other times you just needed to get it out. We interviewed a lady, T. Marie King in Birmingham. I think it was in Birmingham. We interviewed her, I think it was. And she talked about being at the what's commonly called the lynching memorial in Montgomery and seeing one of the jars of earth there with the name of one of her relatives on it. Oh, my. Yeah.

And she talked about the moment she saw that because she was giving a tour with other people, looked up and there was the name and she knew the name immediately. Oh. When she told about that, you know, that was, that was one of those moments where you hearing it. You felt wow. But yes, she told us in a very cool, a very balanced way that showed how she had taken this in. And she had, as the episode is called, found a place for it.

I think often in talking about these things that we heard it help both of us to find places for it inside of us because we knew it would never go away. We knew it would be with us for a lifetime, but we had to find a place for it.

So before you started this trip, what did you imagine that it was going to be like to do this, that you have an idea in your mind of what this was all going, how it was going to play out? Oh, wow.

That's a wonderful question. And I'll start by saying I immediately had hoped we would eat lots of amazing, delicious soul food, which we did indeed. I have never eaten so much incredible fried chicken in my life, but that was just the culinary physical aspect of it. I didn't know what to expect. I went into this with a sense of wonder, a sense of searching, and I was looking for not just these parts of history that were never taught to me, but in a way, I think I was also looking for parts of myself that had never been revealed to me, things about where I came from that I've never known about, because people are products of the places where they are and the families where they grow up.

And I grew up distanced from my African-American family. My African-American family also has roots in the Deep South in Alabama, and I have never spent any significant amount of time there. But I know that their DNA, I know that that Alabama soil runs through my blood. So I was just excited to go and to be there, to breathe the air, to walk on the streets where perhaps my ancestors, my relatives flocked to see the places that they saw and also to bear witness.

To what they survived, I'm still here. I am here because they were strong. They survived, they lived their resilience and their grit is evidenced by the fact that I'm here generations later. I've done several other road trips related to BBC programs, so for me, part of it is making sure we stay on schedule, making sure we get the interviews down on time, making sure we're on the road on time. I'm very much about that because you only have so many days for the entire production.

It's like a movie. You have to do it in 12 days or you don't. There's no other time or resources left. So that was always in the back of my mind to keep us going. But I was also very much aware of the potential for danger on the road. For example, if we get stopped, which is why they drove substantially more than I did. I was also concerned about weather conditions. I was also concerned about finding the places where we were going because we had no idea where they were located, what types of neighborhoods they were in, whether it would be safe to leave the car.

So I was I was always a little bit concerned. And to me, the surprising thing was when I realized that my concerns often paralleled the concerns of the people using the Green Book, though, where am I going to stay? Where we're going to find food? What happens if something goes wrong? Do we have a number to call? These were all the same concerns. And here I am in 12 nineteen on the road with today.

And we're having the same concerns that when you were talking earlier about leaving very, very early to avoid the possibility of being on the road at night, I was like I heard so many people telling that exact story in one of the earlier episodes of the podcast.

Yes, yes. And people also drove all night long sometimes. And they would leave in the middle of the night. Why? Because they wanted to avoid the white gaze on the road, because many people don't know that any white person, especially in the South, could stop any black person on the road. And so in order to avoid the chances of that happening, many people drove all night.

And also by driving during the day, you avoided the risk of being caught in a sun downtown. After the sun went down, sundown towns did not permit African-American people to be within their borders once the sun went down. Or there could be trouble tonight.

When you talked earlier about sort of your your sense going into it, when I had asked if if there was an image in your mind of what this trip was going to be like, how did the trip compare to to how you thought going into it when you were at the other end of it at the end, had it gone the way that you thought that it was going to you? I feel like Alvin had a good sense of being having gone on several road trips of how that was going to at least most of I was going to go, well, I'm going to as this thinking, I'm going to say something.

The trip did not turn out the way I thought it would initially when we thought it through. We were looking for people who had visited certain hotels, certain places in that town, who had eaten at certain restaurants, who could recall what it was like to walk down the black streets and areas of that town. However, I'm going to be very honest and direct about this. I think for a lot of the people we interviewed, it may have been the first time that they were being interviewed by a black couple.

And I think that because of the combination of our personalities, our sense of grace, that we made them more comfortable. And the stories went beyond just about buildings and places and time, and they started to share personal stories with us. So at the end of the trip, I realized that we had something richer than I could have ever imagined. The people had trusted us. They had given us their personal stories so we could tell the story of the Green Book in their voices, not ours.

I'll agree with that. I went into this trip thinking we would follow the schedule that we had set. We had this event, had a big atlas. We trusted the GPS. He had an actual gigantic map like he would pull out and open. So we thought that we would follow the map, we would stick to the schedule, we would do all of the interviews as they were lined up. And as we delve deeper into these technical aspects of creating this podcast, what Alvin said is true.

The humanity of what we were documenting was revealed to us in this. Absolutely glorious and resplendent and touching way, and I'm really pleased and proud with the way these final stories were captured and shared out with the audience, because I feel like what the audience experience is hearing these stories really mirrors what I felt when I was on this road trip, searching for this history. When I started this road trip, I was going off in search of history that I had never learned history, that it was not in my schoolbooks.

But I found something that was so much deeper. It was really about the humanity of the people who lived in this time. And to me, it was a wonderful surprise, I think, for both of us. One of the days I think we will laugh about it and smile at each other about it's the interview that we started with on a Nettle's and Crystal Churchwell at the Frist Institute in Nashville. It was such wonderful. They were vibrant, beautiful black women and there were so enthusiastic and so present.

And then we interview went to interview on a Nettle's Dr. Evelyn Nettle's at Tennessee State University. And that evening when we were looking for a place to go to dinner and I said, oh, no, no, no, no, you're coming to my house for dinner. And they all came over. It was so heartwarming. And it could have been just like a scene out of a movie about the real green book. We're driving down the pouring rain, pouring rain.

We have no idea where we're going. So we're looking for the Nettle's house, the safe harbor, so to speak. And we pull up and drive, driving slowly looking for the numbers. And then we see the number we're turning and the lights up there. They come up with towels and umbrellas. It was so touch it was they ushered us into their home.

There were warm drinks, hugs. They acted like we were a long lost family, finally coming to visit after many months. When they had just met us earlier that day, it was really like being embraced and it was such an incredible experience to understand even just a tiny amount, the relief that black travelers must have had back then after being anxious on the road, especially if they were traveling with young children to show up to a family home and to be greeted with such kindness.

It's it's extraordinary. And this is one of those wonderful days that after the interview we were driving the next day, and then I turned and looked at each other and said, but Nettle's of Nashville. And that that is episode five. And the concept behind that has not changed since that moment in that.

I'm looking forward to that one at that. That one should be out. I think by the time this episode of the show comes out, I do want to circle back to the idea. I appreciate this podcast so much and I appreciate your work on it so much, because I feel like as a like as a white listener, I'm getting a perspective that I would not have gotten if someone else had gone to do these interviews. And like if if a white podcast host had asked the same people similar questions, that their responses might not have been as candid.

So I'm extraordinarily grateful that, like this is existing now to share these people's experiences and views for all audiences in a way that I think if if I had tried to do it, I might not have captured.

I think part of that is, again, due to Jinnah's personality and grace. And I always say my Southernness several times during the interviews, people would go, Where are you from? And I would go from really from Tallahassee, Florida. They go, I knew you are from the South or you sound like a relative of mine because I am Southern, but I live in New York City. I remain a deeply southern person in so many ways. And I think that connection was the thing that made them more trusting.

They knew we weren't up to betray them or trick them. We just wanted to have a conversation. And the other part of it was because John and I are both intelligent people and we talk through everything. We did all of these interviews without notes. We weren't sitting there with notes on our laps following question. We were listening to these people and all of our questions and responses came honestly and intuitively out of what they were saying, organically out of what they were saying.

Yeah, that's right.

We didn't take notes because we weren't there to collect these stories as if they were merely artifacts. These stories were gifts, and it was generous of people to share these gifts with us, especially because for many folks, this was not something that they had really talked about publicly before. And the fact that they were speaking about it with me and Alvin was profound because we are black people and black history is American history. Black stories are American stories. But we wanted to tell these black stories from the black perspective.

We wanted to center wackness African-Americans in everything and every element of this podcast. And I think you can feel that when you listen, it feels authentic, it feels true. And we're really honoring the spirit and the energy of the people who took the time to share these memories with us.

And I'd like to add one thing to that. I think that all of that was enhanced by the work of Juillet Calendrical Williams, who was the editor. She got the stories emotionally and intellectually from the very first day we worked together. In the first day, we edited one complete program. She got it. And then she introduced us to Cedric Wilson, who did the soundscape and did an original score. And I gave them some of the music that we had taken on the road trip and shared with him some music that I love from that period.

And I think the soundscape adds to the emotional depth, makes the time pass quickly, and it disappears right at the time you need it to, and it comes in when you need it to.

Next up in the interview, Tracey is going to talk with Alvin and Jenny about the timing of driving the Green Book's release, both in terms of the ongoing covid-19 pandemic and the pandemic of systemic racism. But before we get into that, let's take a quick break. Wendy, you were on this trip, and I imagine when you started working on editing the episodes, depending on what your timeline was like, it seems unlikely that anyone imagined that this podcast was going to be coming out to the public in the middle of a pandemic when travel is not being encouraged for anyone.

Do you think that is going to affect how people hear and interact with these episodes?

We really had no control over the release date of this podcast series, and I was anxious to get it out. But I think in many ways, fates were looking favorably upon us. I think that somewhere there something or some power believed that people needed to hear this story. And it got released at this time when people may have been looking for something like this. I know that many people were at home and had seen the Green Book movie. So this provided a nice balance.

But what they were feeling toward the movie and maybe it made them more curious about and open to hearing the real story as opposed to the Hollywood version of the Hollywood version is very different.

It is a very different story because it's told from the white point of view, it's told from the point of view of the driver, not the point of view of the African-American pianist.

Hours, as they said, is told from the point of view of a black person, of the black people we interviewed and ourselves, they are comment about the pandemic really makes me think because you were referencing the covid-19 pandemic and it's all been said, people being at home and having more time, hopefully that makes them more curious to learn the real history. But we are also deep in a moment around another pandemic, the racism pandemic, which is evidenced by police brutality against people of color, by the unwarranted stops on the road that escalate into violence against people of color.

And there is a growing public consciousness around that. So we're living through these twin pandemics of racism and violence against black people also, while we're quarantined at home because of the Koban 19 pandemic. And in an odd way, I think that does create a situation where stories like this one really speak to the moment that we were in and hopefully can help people think about how can we be better in the future. I think what I said is absolutely spot on.

I think I worked on getting the series commissioned. And realize for over two years, and I believe that and when we finally got it commissioned, I was thrilled when they said yes, I was thrilled when we started the road trip. I was thrilled. But then we had to do the production and the production took a little bit longer. And then when Julka finally came into the picture, it started to move fast. But even after that, there were little delays and little delays.

And I became concerned. Clearly somewhere out there, some force was delaying this for this moment. Ancestors, the ancestors. Exactly.

You went to so many places. You talked to so many people for this podcast.

Was there anything like a story that anyone told you or something that happened along the way that you really wanted to fit into an episode and there just wasn't a good place for it?

Oh, yes. When we were editing, there was a brilliant story when Dr. Evelyn Nettle's was visiting her grandmother, Essie Nettle's down in Moss Point, Mississippi, when she was a little girl. Her grandmother gave us some money and she went into the store to buy some ice cream. And of course, being a little girl, she didn't know that it was a segregated store. So she was up at the counter with her money, about to buy her ice cream.

And her grandmother, who was in the car, saw her and rushed in and grabbed her to get her out of there. And she didn't really understand why until much later. There were many stories like that about how a a parent would try to protect their child. And often you heard them say later on, I really didn't know what was going on because my parents so protected me. We wanted to do a whole episode about that, but that was difficult to pull off.

And so we left that story go. And I think the other one was which we kept in until the last moment was Crystal Churchwell when we were sitting there in the Forest Museum and across from the Amtrak station. And she looked out of the window and said, my father was a porter in that station. And they treated him so badly in that job that he didn't even last longer there. And he or she is sitting in the museum overlooking that station where her father was treated so badly.

It's it was just one of those rich moments you want to keep in because it s texture, but you can't. And there were many moments in the car or when Alvin and I would tour places and we would share our reflections on the stories we heard or these historical sites that we were visiting. And those don't appear in the podcast. And I do think there is a power in those reflections, because as we mentioned earlier, Alvin and I grew up at different times in this country and we have had different experiences being black people in this country.

He's a man. I'm a woman. We're different generations. He grew up in the south. I grew up in the northeast. And we still have the shared experience. And so many of the stories and reflections we were sharing were grounded in some universal fundamental truths that I have discovered hold solid, I think, for most black folks. And I would love to be able to share some of that someday.

Are there any of the universal truth that you'd like to talk about now that we are an optimistic people? We could not have lived through Jim Crow segregation. We could not have survived all of the redlining that occurred, the denial of our rights when we had gone to war to fight communism and fascism and then come back to this country and be treated the way we were. We have to be optimistic people. We are a forgiving people because you hear the stories and most of them are really horrific.

But people forgive and move on. We don't forget, but we forgive and move on because we know that we have to make a better life for ourselves. And I think that while we are aware of the past, we try not to let people trap us. In the past, many people will refer to black people as if there's been no progress since, no reconstruction process, Jim Crow laws since the Great Migration. We are a diverse people in America and we've done a lot to help sustain America.

I tell everybody, we are the people with the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Who helped America realize the word democracy? It's that simple. So there are those truths that we all participate in that I think about quite frequently, especially in the times in which we live.

So driving the Green Book is 10 total episodes. I have heard four of them. There will be a fifth one out by the time this episode comes out. Do you each have favorites among those episodes or are they all are they all at an equal place in your hearts?

Can any mother choose a favorite? Among other things, where I can't listen to I cannot listen to Episode six. Oh, it is. It's so Hank Sanford story about his mother. It's so powerful, so powerful, and it's a simple story, and at the very end of it, they ask a very simple question. What is your mother's name? It's a beautiful sequence, and for me, that story is the one that lives in me every day, every day.

I don't think I've let that story go since the time we recorded it. I will never forget that moment. That is one of my most favorite moments of being on the road. I remember when he said her name. Yeah, the hairs on my arm stood up and it was almost as if you could feel her presence because we said her name. We called her back to us. Yes. And another favorite moment was when he recalled the march from Selma to Montgomery and he talked about Dr.

King and how he would say how long and the crowd would say not long. And then he repeated again, how long? Not long. And then I asked the question if Dr. King was standing in front of you today and he said, how long? How would you answer that question today? One of those moments you never forget. Thank you both so much for talking to me today, is there anything that you would really want our listeners to know about driving the Green Book or your experience working on it?

I think for Jenny and me, one of the rich aspects of this series. Is the different accents that you will hear throughout? You have has a higher opening and you have the beautiful voice of Evelin Nettle's, you have Danny Ransome talking about his love of maps. And to me, just to hear all of those accents from all over the south, it's just so beautiful. It's and I think people need to listen out for that, because I think that is what really makes this better than just going out and doing a simple documentary.

And there'll be long passages in which you will hear nothing from Jenay or from me, and all you have will be the voices of the people we interviewed. My hope is that driving the green book inspires younger black people to seek out the stories of their elders. These are not the stories that are commonly told, but these are the stories that are so important for us to understand collectively who we are and the strength that we have and all of the beauty and intelligence and grace and wisdom that we have to offer the world.

There are so many more of these stories. There are 10 episodes in this podcast we could have made one hundred. There are so many more stories and not just about the green book, black people, African-Americans. We are extraordinary and spectacular. There's so much more to be shared. Thank you both again so, so much. Thank you for our listeners who want to learn more about the Negro Motorist Green Book. First, of course, there's the excellent podcast that we have been talking about for the last half hour or so.

Also, the New York Public Library has digitized more than 20 years of green books. They put them online in 2015. And so if you would like to go browse through them, see what it look like, those are there. And then driving the Green Book is from Macmillan podcasts and it's available on Apple podcast and Stitcher. And I hurt radio app, basically anywhere that you would like to get your podcasts. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much to Alvin and Jenny for taking the time to talk with me.

It was truly a pleasure. I really appreciate their work on driving the Green Book. Like I said, when I talk to them, I had listened to the four episodes that were already out. And they are they are really lovely and thoughtful and insightful. I really hope our listeners will check it out. Also, as I said in the interview, it's the subject we've really wanted to cover on our show for a long time. And their approach to it is just really moving and and interesting.

There's a lot going on. Tracey, I am so thankful that you made time to do this interview. It came up at a time when my schedule was not very forgiving and willing to make a space.

So I really, really appreciate it since this did run a little bit long and it is a lot of really marvelous information to digest. We're not doing listener mail this time. But Tracey, do you want to tell people where they can find us? Yes. If you would like to e-mail us, you can. A history podcast that I heart, radio dot com, and then we're all over social media, edmiston history. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.

And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcast, The Hurt Radio App.

And anywhere else, you get your podcast. Stuff you missed in history class is the production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts from My Heart radio visit by her radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. In this uncertain and turbulent time, it's helpful to reflect on a historical past, to understand how it can inform our present in our election special two part series of personality, we're digging into the life and legacy of Joe McCarthy. Want to understand what really made Joe McCarthy tick and in turn would affect his psyche had on Americans of the Day.

Take a listen to this new two part personality election special and all of our other episodes on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.