Establishments That Served the Black Community in Montgomery County in 1958
Montgomery County wasn’t featured in a historical Green Book publication, but according to Montgomery County Historical Society, in 1958, there was a list of safe places in the county for the black community to visit.
The organization sent MCM a document compiled by the NAACP’s Montgomery County Branch in May 1958 that showed places that were safe for black people to eat without facing discrimination at the time.
Check out the document below, courtesy of the historical society.
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About Deirdre Byrne
Deirdre Byrne is a social media coordinator for Montgomery Community Media. She can be reached at dbyrne@mymcmedia.org or on twitter at @DeirdreByrneMCM.
One of the many notable things about this post is that it doesn’t mention that the list illustrated was the back half of a 2-sided sheet distributed by the Montgomery County Chapter of the NAACP. The front side showed the restaurants known to discriminate. The NAACP began distributing the flyers after surveys began in 1957 whereby the organization sent testers to Montgomery County establishments to identify those who discriminate. One objective was to embarrass the ones continuing to discriminate to end their Jim Crow practices. As for the organization that provided this copy to Montgomery County Media, it has a problematic history with whitewashing Montgomery County history. For context, this review of the historical society’s 1950s exhibit mentions the survey pictured here and the ways that the historical society manipulates it: https://activisthistory.com/2018/06/06/an-exhibit-on-1950s-life-reproduces-segregation/