"Black driving" existed as early as the appearance of cars.

African-American southerners in Jim Crowe's time often set out from the north to visit relatives who did not join the great migration. A humble paper guidebook is usually equivalent to a life-saving bag. Green books often play a role in saving lives.

How does the map of gas stations help African-American tourists navigate in an isolated country? Victor Green, a visionary publisher and entrepreneur, a postal company in Harlem, introduced the travel guide at 1937. For blacks, restaurants, hotels and toilets are not allowed. If they drive after dark, they usually take more risks. This is an indispensable resource, which lists hundreds of organizations all over the south and the country that have deeply hurt African Americans.

Before the Civil Rights Act 1964 declared apartheid illegal, the book Green was sold for millions of dollars and passed from one family member to another. For those who rely on it, this is a basic safety precaution. Today, it is the product of a powerful discrimination.

The Green Book is also the theme of filmmaker Rick Burns' fourth documentary. Burns is exploring this green paper as a window to understand the past and present, and the experience of black driving has once again become the center of our national discussion. I talked to Burns about what he learned while making this film.

Please see the exclusive clip about the "Green Book" in the documentary "Ping Rick Burns". How did you first meet the Green Book?

My colleague Gretchen Sorin runs a Kuipers Museum. She is an outstanding historian. She wrote a paper about the Green Book decades ago. Not long ago, she came up to me and said, "Let's make a movie about it." No one knows the Green Book better than her. She is really a little self-created, has done oral history, has been to many places and collected amazing material files for decades.

What attracted you to the Green Paper Project?

I was born in 1955, so in the era of American automobile culture, anyone who takes root through his own life or his parents or grandparents.

That's right.

You know, all these things are like the old Esso sign, the motel, Howard Johnson's. This is part of America's inner imagination. What African Americans don't know is that this story has a completely different function. It unfolds in a completely different way, so when you drive into Greenville, Texas, the banner says "Greenville, Texas". Black is earth, and white is human. "You will have a different experience in the family car."

We are making a movie called "Black while Driving". This film tells the story of this period. Suddenly, the black car in America came out like all Americans. Just like liquidity. You have the power of attorney. You don't depend on other people's schedules or schedules. You can go wherever you want, wherever you want.

But for black Americans, all of a sudden, America's mobility and racial problems have become a huge powder keg. Now you have crossed the gap as a black man. What if your car breaks down? What happens when you need gas? What happens when your four-year-old needs to go to the bathroom? Where are you going to eat? Where will you sleep? God forbids things like car accidents and medical accidents. How do you get to the hospital? Which hospital are you going to? I mean, all the experiences. All these are closely related to the American experience in the simplest way. I mean, it's simple. As long as there is a car, there is that institution, but there are also those challenges.

[This movie] is an opportunity to fill the gap in the internal map of the United States. You would say, "Well, there was a civil war, and then there was something called reconstruction. Maybe Jim Crow means something to people, but what is truly credible and reasonably organized? What was the racial experience of the United States through the1920s civil rights movement?

What unexpected discoveries have you made about resources? What was your surprise when you dug this up? "

We are in the first stage of it, and we have just started shooting. So these surprises still exist, but what I want to say is that the incredible part of this topic, the whole field, is a surprise for African Americans.

Because you realize that there is a reality that you have never really understood. Once it appeared, this amazing revelation was completely changed. One of the reasons why this kind of car is so popular with black Americans is that it is difficult to see who is driving it. As Gunnar Mildred (Nobel Prize winner and economist) said, equality begins at about 25 miles per hour. All these carefully designed passwords (for example, black Americans must stop to make way for white Americans) are beginning to deviate from the right track. When you cross the American road world, you are a little in your own closed world. You have the contact information you want. If you don't want to contact, you can't have contact.

Making this experience too familiar is a happy way for black Americans, and it is also very, very frustrating and sometimes even fatal. For white Americans, I have no idea. Green paper for black drivers. Just one of them. Travel guide, travel guide. There is such a wonderful slogan on the cover of the guidebook: "It's no shame to have fun on vacation."

Oh, great.

I like Victor Green to delete Mark Twain's famous saying "Travel is fatal to prejudice" and put it on the cover of each issue. But the whole sentence is, "travel is fatal to prejudice, paranoia and narrow-minded thoughts, and many of us need to travel in these areas very much."

What else did you learn? If you are a musician or an athlete, you must have been to many places in America. Cars make it easier for you to get where you want to go, while green books make it easier for you to find a place to stay. However, driving in the dark is always difficult. There is a painful bottom line.

It combines the reality of American experience. Thurgood marshall has an incredible story about Sunset Town. He's in Shreveport, and basically the police are saying, "nigger boy, what are you doing here?" "You'd better go out of town before sunset." Who happened to make Sunset Town a reality except African-Americans? The last issue of Green Guide was published in 1966, and it didn't come for nothing. Victor Green said in his first editorial note that time will soon pass, and I hope that soon, this guide will no longer be necessary. However, before that, everyone had a good time.

And all kinds of things. Esso is the marketing method that Mercer, consumerism and capitalism see in the new demography, so God bless Esso, now ExxonMobil. They left when they saw the opportunity, you know? We're in touch. We have this conversation because Victor Green has established a relationship with Standard Oil Company.

To be exact,

Put the green book on the map in a special way. My home 1958 We drove our American rambler to Esso Station in Delaware. Even if I could ask my parents, I did it in Robles, Delaware. Pennsylvania or Michigan may not have Sunset Town, or maybe they are not Sunset Town in name only.

When you think about the whole narrative arc, do you see a whole narrative arc imposed on the film?

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