The Green Book and Oasis Spaces in North Carolina” traveling exhibit hosted at the N.C. Transportation Museum in Spencer

SPENCER, N.C. (WBTV) – The North Carolina African American Heritage Commission (AAHC), a division of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR), has created a new traveling exhibit about sites important to, and personal memories about, American travel during the “Jim Crow” era of legal segregation.

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The exhibit highlights a complex statewide network of business owners and Green Book sites that allowed African American communities to thrive, and that created “oasis spaces” for a variety of African American travelers.

The Negro Motorist Green Book, published between 1936 and 1966, was both a guide and a tool of resistance designed to confront the realities of racial discrimination in the United States and beyond. The book listed over 300 North Carolina businesses—from restaurants and hotels, to tourist homes, nightclubs and beauty salons—in the three decades that is was published.

The exhibit highlights a complex statewide network of business owners and Green Book sites that allowed African American communities to thrive, and that created “oasis spaces” for a variety of African American travelers. The exhibit will be on display at the N.C. Transportation Museum in Spencer from Sept. 25, 2020 through Feb. 28, 2021.

Eight vibrant panels form the traveling exhibit, showcasing images of business owners, travelers, and historic and present-day images of North Carolina Green Book sites. The words of African American travelers and descendants of Green Book site owners are featured prominently in the exhibit. Each of these stories are from oral histories collected by the AAHC in 2018 and 2019.

The exhibit will be displayed in the museum’s Bumper to Bumper exhibit, where it will be surrounded by period vehicles and back drops of the time period, creating an immersive visitor experience.

There is no extra fee to see this exhibit. It is available with the museum’s regular admission price of $6 for adults, $5 for seniors and military, and $4 for children 3-12.  Ages 2 and under are free.

This exhibit was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services

For additional information about the exhibit, please call (919) 814-6516.

The museum is committed to offering a safe experience for our visitors.  The museum offers online, contact-free ticket purchases.  Tickets can also be purchased onsite at the Barber Junction Visitor Center, where social distancing markers and plexiglass shields will separate staff from visitors.

Staff is performing ongoing and routine environmental cleaning and disinfection of high-touch areas with an EPA approved disinfectant. Hand sanitizer stations remain available across the museum grounds. Staff engage in frequent use of hand washing and hand sanitizer. Face masks remain required, as outlined in Executive Order 163, for all employees and visitors who are within six feet of other people.

Signage across the museum grounds will continue to remind visitors of the three Ws: Wear a cloth face mask, wait six feet apart from others, and wash your hands frequently or use hand sanitizer.

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