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Hall created Driving the Green Book with Janée Woods Weber based on a 2,021-mile road trip they made together from Detroit to New Orleans. Along the way, they spoke to people about how they had once turned to The Negro Motorist Green Book to guide them on their travels across the country.
The Negro Motorist Green Book was a guidebook published annually from 1933 to 1967 to help African Americans—during the era of Jim Crow laws and segregation—find safe places to buy gasoline, sleep, eat, and have fun. It also offered tips on how to handle different situations that might arise on the road, Hall said.
Hall spoke with President Clayton Rose last fall about the origins of the Green Book podcast. In that conversation, he touched on his initial struggle to find support for his project, before finally connecting with a producer at Macmillan Podcasts. “Most people thought of the Green Book as an obsolete, out-of-date publication, something that had virtually no cultural significance at all,” Hall recollected.
