Overground Railroad is a necessary book for all people to read about the history of real fears that black Americans developed and have currently while living in the United States. It lays out the harsh and ugly truths about what occurred from 1936 and 1966 and even currently, and why the travel guide called the “Green Book” was needed. Published by Victor Hugo Green, the book helped promote black-owned business and gave travelers places to go for the basic needs while traveling. It goes even deeper to celebrate different people's stories who stood up to racism to make travel easier and safer. Present day issues that we still face in America are addressed as well.

Listening to the audiobook was great, but I missed out on the pictures that the book provided. I felt like it was a well researched book and was full of new information about this time period that I didn't know. I think everyone needs to take the time to see what our past was like so we can help change it moving forward. You will hear some opinions from the author.

I received a copy of the audiobook from Netgalley and Tantor Audio for an honest review.

This is not just about road tripping while black. It’s an examination of our country’s approach to civil liberties and the rampant racist highways that have been paved through our political systems and subconscious.

Every reader will learn something new here, it might be one or two things for some or it might be a new fact every few minutes for others, how exciting!

I remember hearing about this book when Candacy Taylor was working on it at the Schomburg Center through a friend who was also on fellowship there. Honestly, I've been waiting to get my hands on it since then and was so thrilled to get an audiobook ARC for it. This was great in audio format--an engaging and entertaining narrator whose voice carried you along. As always for books with visual content that get translated to audio, I do hope there is a companion PDF for readers to experience the full force of Taylor's image selections.

This is a sweeping history of America's cycles of covert and overt racism and the ways Black people have adapted using travel to focus the story. If you've dreamt of Route 66 or plan your vacations around road trips, this is an absolute must-read to bring you history you may not have been taught and provide some much-needed context for what is happening today and why we must actively work to fight it.

Overground Railroad is an in depth coverage of the years that the Green Book was published. Many of the facts listed throughout this book were very eye opening to me and I had never realized that something like the Green Book existed until listening. The author does an incredible job of covering all this information fully but it did tend to get tiresome as she seemed to have a hard time separating her opinion and bias from the facts of the book. But this did not bother me so much while read; it just stuck out as chapter upon chapter held current political opinions. Everything is political today and even though this book does cover many political topics and discusses policies that were in place during the 30's, 40's 50's and 60's while the Green Book was published it also delved into the current happenings and I wasn't sure how relevant they were to the topic. I appreciated her research, the writing was well done and the chapters were laid out in a way that I was actually surprised when I got to the end so quickly. I received this audiobook from Netgalley; these are my own thoughts and opinions.

Having read Isabel Wilkerson's seminal work, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration earlier this year, I've found myself wanting to dig deeper into more nonfiction works adjacent to it thematically. OVERGROUND RAILROAD by Candacy A. Taylor was one I first saw Antonia (@blackgirlthatreads) reviewing and I added it to my TBR immediately! This looks at the Green Book, a publication released between 1936-1967 described as the "Black travel guide to America," which navigated the complexities and dangers of eating, finding accommodation, seeking roadside assistance and more as needed by Black travelers amidst the racism across the country from white people and white-owned businesses.

It specifically looks at the historical role and residual impact of the Green Book, including the founding editors, and the evolution of its content and the support it received. Structurally, this uses the various editions that were published over the years, and the social history Taylor writes about draws from this thematically and substantively. For example, looking at the artwork and representations of who appears on the cover over the years to draw on a broader conversation around natural hair and a celebration of image and identity. It examines broader content around sundown towns and Jim Crow and segregation alongside a more personal narrative about specific people involved with the Green Book and that advertised within it or used it to travel, and is a text brimming with so many facts (the content around the buying and brand significance of Cadillacs, the changes in interstate highway construction that changed the literal landscape of towns and communities, and more!)

I'd particularly recommend this as one to read alongside Wilkerson's text, and I was grateful to read the audiobook thanks to PRH Audio.

5⭐️
My copy of this was an audiobook and I loved the narrator. She is one of my favorites in the audiobook world. And to be honest I probably wouldn’t of enjoyed it as much if I had read it.

Now about the book. It’s a story of race in America. The green book was a guide-map that was created to allow African Americans safe travel. The first book was only 10 pages long. While writing this, the author visited 30 sites a day. These “green books” also represented survival. This book is a historical account and pilgrimage. The author shows her dedication in her words and it was a piece of history I knew nothing about.

I highly recommend it and hope you take the time to unpack it. Let the telling teach you something about our America. The good news is that it isn’t to late to start doing the right thing.

Thank you NETGALLEY and the publisher for this ARC, in exchange for my honest review. ♥️

I really enjoyed this history of 'The Green Book' - a travel guide which let Black travelers know what motels/restaurants/gas stations/etc would accept them as clients when they were on the road. Published almost annually from the 1930s till the 1960s, the Green Book was a vital item to allow Black people to safely travel; given different states and cities' levels of segregation.

I'm kind of embarrassed I never thought before about how difficult it would have been for the average Black family to drive more than a few hours from home. This book was an eye-opening look at that era of American history for Black people in America.

I thought I knew the story of the Green Book, but from the beginning I knew I did not know that much. It never occurred to me why Blacks in the 1930’and 1940’s chose to drive at night. Nor did I know how the automobile industry helped Blacks find work. Taylor’s trip across America to find the ruminates of what was presented in the Green book was heartbreaking in the discovery than less than 5% of the businesses are still in operation. I listened to the audiobook, which was good, but because of the accompanying photographs and drawings, I would prefer this book in print. I do not even recommend Kindle.

Published from 1936 to 1966, the Green Book was a travel guide for African Americans, providing potentially life-saving information about what restaurants, hotels, boarding houses, tourist sites, countries, auto dealers, and even colleges they would be welcomed. Author and documentarian Candacy Taylor uses the history of the Green Book as a gateway into a much larger story about how black bodies in the United States have been surveilled, censured, and violated since the end of the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves. Drawing on interviews, archival documents, newspapers, and of course the Green Book, she offers a powerful indictment of the legacies of institutional racism: decades of government indifference and disinvestment, red lining and the devaluation of black real estate, a modern policing and prison system that evolved from slave patrols, and years of unequal schools. But what makes this narrative truly compelling is its seamless incorporation of firsthand accounts of what it meant and means to be black in the United States. For example, the book opens with a testimonial by the author's stepfather Ron of what it was like to travel as an African American in the 1950s. A small boy at the time, he vividly recalls one night when his family was pulled to the side of the road by a sheriff. Suddenly a trip that had been filled with joy turned into a nightmare as the sheriff inquired of his father, "Where did he get that car?" The fully-loaded 1953 sedan belonged to his father, but his father knew better than to claim ownership. Instead, he answered that it was his employer's car and that he was a hired driver. He was taking home his employer's maid and her son. The sheriff then asked, "Where's your chauffeur's cap?" And at that moment the father pointed to a cap on a hook just behind the driver's seat -- something that the young Ron had seen in the car but never really understood its presence. Now, he realized that it was a prop, carried specifically for the purpose of ensuring his family's safety when out on the road. These types of stories found throughout the book ensure that the reader never forgets that the abstract concept of institutional racism has real world consequences for individuals of color, who like their white counterparts, have dreams, goals, aspirations, and human dignity, but who because of the color of their skin don't have the same opportunities to realize them.

The narrator for the audio version of this book does an impeccable job. This is no small feat given the book runs the gamut from historical narrative to personal horror stories to moments of humor. Through the intonation of her voice, she communicates the author's impassioned plea for change and the moments of humor and horror, while at the same time using a more objective tone to communicate the historical arc of the Green Book's evolution over the years and how ironically integration, for which African Americans had fought so hard, inadvertently led to the demise of many of the businesses that advertised in the Green Book.

Overall this was not as expected. I thought it was about the history of the Green Book and stories of the brave business owners who opened their doors to people of color, even when they were taking a risk to do so. There is a little bit of that in the book. But the author spends a lot of time on current political topics and their opinion of the President. I have been avoiding current political books and reviews by choice, so I don’t like it when a political book is represented as something else.

I did appreciate the author's well written description of what it was like to live under the Jim Crow laws, and the horrific treatment of black people during that time. Unfortunately she kept referring back to 2020 politics constantly. If I had been warned this was a book about current politics I would have passed it by.

There was a period of almost 30 minutes early in the book that was strictly about current politics, and I almost stopped listening at that point. This book was not really as described, but is well written and will appeal to others who don't mind all the current political commentary.

I received a free copy of this audiobook from Netgalley. My review is voluntary.

This audiobook was given to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
When I first read the title, I was a little uneasy because I thought that I will be listening to a nine hour narration about somebody describing another book (the Green Book).
I WAS SO WRONG.
And I am glad that I was, I am glad that I did not give up and kept listening to it, anyhow.

Because this is not a book about a book this is a step by step immersion into why the Green Book had been needed in the first place in Jim Crow`s America. This is a history lesson that punches you in the gut in the most refined possible way.
It holds you on the edge of you seat, it makes you afraid and it sparks anger. It was like a ballad that sung the black experience in segregationist America.

It is a good material to understand better the current situation. It is a good beginning to start paying attention to your surroundings.

Between 1936 and 1966 a guide called the “Green Book” was published to assist black people in finding accommodations when traveling in America. Through most of this time, it was published by Victor Hugo Green, a postal worker from Harlem. The fact that such a guide was needed is shameful, but without it there would not have been a way to find food, housing, gas or bathrooms in most of this country. The book featured black-owned businesses and black-friendly ones. This was no small task considering the prevalence of segregation. We shouldn’t be under the impression that this was a “southern problem”, many businesses on 125th Street in Harlem refused to serve negroes. “A huge concern for black motorists was getting stranded in a ‘sundown town’, an all-white enclave that banned black people from entering after dark.” “...sundown towns were largely a northern construct, starting in about 1890 and lasting well into the 1960s in fact, he found hundreds of sundown towns in Illinois alone.” Sometimes drivers would have to travel hundreds of miles to find accommodations. They knew to bring food, water and camping equipment if they were traveling on Route 66.

This book is wonderfully thorough. The author actually traveled to the “Green Book” sites. It is arranged chronologically so it permits the author to trace social progress. “By the 1960s “...the ‘Green Book’ had grown from a ten-page pamphlet to a 128-page book. And although it was still sold at Esso stations, it could be purchased also on newsstands and in Gimbels department store in New York City. By the 1960s, the ‘Green Book’ had subscribers from all over the world, including Canada, Mexico, the West Indies, England and West Africa.” The vibrancy in the listings seemed to diminish when they were redesigned in 1956. Some types of listings disappeared, like music venues, gas stations, drugstores, hair salons and sanitariums. The “Green Book” was then more like a AAA travel guide. The 1963-64 edition published an article that outlined anti discrimination laws for 30 states, provided information for what recourse readers had if they were refused service or treated poorly and listed every US Civil Rights Commission office by state. “This is not a book about the history of road-tripping and black travel. It’s more of a pilgrimage toward understanding a country so blinded by symbolism that it can’t or won’t tackle the pervasive, relentless forces that created the environment for the “Green Book” to thrive in the first place. It is a book that I hope will show how we got here and why, after all this time, we still have so far to go.”

There are so many interesting tidbits here. I bet you don’t know who patented the first golf tee. It was George Grant, an African American dentist in 1899. The book has a picture of the patented tee. Also, many black men kept a chauffeur’s cap in their cars, so when the police pulled them over they could claim that they were driving their employer’s car. Otherwise, the cop would either assume that if a negro was driving a nice car either the car was stolen or that the driver was uppity for having dared to own a car better than the cop owned, either way a beating was likely to ensue. My, how times have changed. The cap trick doesn’t work anymore.

There are lots of pictures in this book (including a picture of every cover other than the first one). I have ARCs of both the ebook and the audiobook so I got to see the pictures. I really hope that the final version of the audiobook comes with a pdf. The narration by Lisa Reneé Pitts of the audiobook was excellent.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.