Everywhere you turn, Americans are celebrating 100 years of Route 66 despite the fact that it was officially removed from the United States Highway System in 1985. The iconic route, which spans a little more than 2,400 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles, California, has a history that transcends and divides generations.
Officially established on November 11, 1926, as the first continuous highway linking the Midwest to the American West, Route 66 was a major throughway that connected rural America to urban cities. Earning the nicknames “Main Street America” and the “Mother Road,” Route 66 changed both the economy and American travel.
Route 66 stretched across eight states, hundreds of towns and municipalities, and three time zones. By the 1950s, Route 66 had become the quintessential route for the American family road trip. While there is no single exact count of all the businesses that lined the highway, historians with the National Park Service estimate thousands of independent mom-and-pop businesses, such as hotels, motels, restaurants, gas stations, and more, operated on the route.
For most Americans, the open road was either a vacation or the promise of a better life, as people migrated to the West in search of jobs. The highway is highly regarded as a symbol of hard work, independence, and freedom.
Route 66: The Mother Road Had A Two-Lane Problem
Freedom carries an implicit asterisk here. Route 66 was anything but a smooth and free diagonal highway for Black travelers in its prime.
Pull out a map of Route 66 and trace your finger along its 2,400 miles. Start in Chicago, then drive down towards St. Louis, Missouri, and into the flat wheat fields of Kansas. From there, cross the red dirt of Oklahoma, just miles away from Tulsa. Continue moving through the Texas panhandle and into New Mexico’s high desert before landing in Arizona’s dramatic mountainous landscapes and clear skies. You’re inching closer to the finish line as you cross your way into California, where you meet the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica.
Now, let’s open Victor Hugo Green’s “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” the 1956 edition.
Start in Chicago and trace that same route. Count the hotels and restaurants where a Black family could safely rest their heads or sit down for a meal without being turned away, humiliated, or worse. Count the gas stations that would actually pump fuel into a Black motorist’s car.
You will not need both hands if you count carefully. There are only four listed on the route itself in this edition. It’s worth noting that several Green Book listings existed in towns near the highway, but only four on the route itself. When considering the context, the landmark federal law, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, hadn’t yet passed.
The four destinations listed for Black travelers in this version of the Green Book included the El Adobe Hotel in Needles, California; The White Rock Motel in Kingman, Arizona; the Amigo Motel & Café in Tucumcari, New Mexico; and the Casa Linda Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico.
“Visitors to New Mexico will find little if any racial restriction there,” a note reads to Black travelers in the 1956 edition of the Green Book. The note continues, “The majority of the scores of motels across the state accept guests on the basis of cash rather than color. Hotels, restaurants, and theater owners assert they welcome and value the Negro customers’ patronage highly.”
Picking up the 1966–67 edition, which was the last Green Book ever printed, tells a different story. Published two years after the Civil Rights Act was supposed to have changed everything, not much changed regarding the number of places deemed safe for Black travelers.
When tracing the route again, the number of places listed along Route 66 where Black travelers could safely stop remained almost exactly the same. The only hotel that remained on the list was the El Adobo Motel in California. The hotel in Kingman appears to have changed to the Mountain Villa Motel, and the New Mexico options were no longer listed along the highway. Park Plaza Motel in Flagstaff, Arizona, and Mrs. L Hillard Motel in St. Clair, Missouri, were added in the last edition.
“In many ways, the Civil Rights Act made traveling worse for Black travelers,” says Dr. Carla L. Jackson, a Midwest-based historian. “It angered people across the country. There was a contorted, widespread effort among many white Americans to keep Black people out of places they felt they didn’t belong. The law changed. The road didn’t.”
Freedom along the road for Black travelers, Jackson notes, depended on Green’s expertise printed on the slim paperback guide, a prayer, chicken fried the night before that was packed in a brown paper bag or shoebox in the backseat, and a bucket in the trunk used as portable toilets in case the gas stations wouldn’t let you in.
This side of the Route 66 story isn’t printed on postcards.
“Shoebox lunches or the idea of grease from brown paper bags of fried chicken stems directly from the Jim Crow era of segregation,” said Jackson. “It refers to survival for Black families who traveled with pre-cooked meals in empty shoeboxes or brown paper bags because it was common for them to be legally denied service at white establishments.”
Sundown Towns: An Invisible Terror
From the 1930s through the 1960s, America had more than 10,000 “sundown towns.” These places were all-white communities that warned Black people to leave before the sun went down with signs posted and even explicitly stated.
The unofficial slogan in Anna, Illinois, a town along Route 66, was “Ain’t No N*G**** Allowed.” The town had violently expelled its African American population.
In Candacy Taylor’s book, “Overground Railroad,” the author explores the Negro Motorist Green Book and the history of African-American travel. The chapter devoted to Route 66 highlights the grim reality for Black travelers.
According to Taylor, at least half the counties along Route 66 were sundown towns when the Green Book was first published. In the 1950s, over a third of counties did not allow Black motorists after 6 p.m. There are about 260 miles between Oklahoma City and Amarillo, which had no facilities for Black travelers, and six of the eight states had segregation laws.
While the South carries the infamous reputation for its Jim Crow laws, Robert Edison, resident historian at the African American Museum in Dallas, said segregation could be found everywhere in the country.
Route 66: An Open Road of Resilience For Black Travelers
Black travelers didn’t let the laws of the land keep them from traveling on highways like Route 66.
Nat King Cole and The King Cole Trio gave Black families a soundtrack for the road with their 1946 recording of “Route 66,” with the lines “Get your kicks on Route 66.”
Families worked around the obstacles, and businesses set up shop to welcome Black families safely. According to Route 66 News, Alberta’s Hotel in Springfield, Missouri, converted a former hospital into a haven for Black travelers. There was lodging, a salon, a barbershop, a restaurant, and a nightclub that hosted Stevie Wonder, The Drifters, and the Harlem Globetrotters.
While America celebrates 100 years of the Mother Road, including its nostalgia, neon signs, roadside attractions, and taste of American kitsch, many are glossing over how the highway was far from a bed of roses for Black travelers. They navigated it carefully, similar to landmines.
“How Black travelers navigated Route 66 is far from a story of failure. The centennial tells an incredible story of extraordinary resilience,” said Dr. Jackson. “It shows just how far we have come.”
It also shows, tucked between the nostalgia and the neon, exactly where we started and how much of that road still has miles to go.
