Overground Railroad by Candacy Taylor

Author:Candacy Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2020-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Driving a taxi provided reliable income for the black community. Nearly twenty years earlier, Benj. J. Thomas wrote in his article “The Automobile and What It Has Done for the Negro” that black Americans operated a large percentage of the taxicabs in New York City. And this wasn’t happening only in New York. In 1936, about one-third of the 381 taxis licensed to operate in St. Louis, Missouri, were black-owned.

There were ninety-four cab companies listed during the time the Green Book was published, but out of the forty-two Green Book entries for San Francisco, none of them was a taxicab company. Despite the taxi boycott and black people’s struggle to find employment, the San Francisco Green Book article was so hopeful about the Bay Area’s liberal leanings that it said San Francisco would become the “focal point of the Negro future.” Unfortunately, this didn't happen; San Francisco’s black population has plummeted since the 1950s. In 1959, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency was formed, and facilitated an aggressive urban renewal program. Using the legal argument of eminent domain (i.e., the right of the government to expropriate private property), the agency removed black people from their homes, decimating the culture and community of the Fillmore District.

Green Book cover, 1954

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