Green Book: Transcending Racial and Musical Borders in America’s Deep South

By Mara Etienne-Manley

 

Traditional approaches in the study of borders in society have often centred on the role of physical and geographical borders in restricting connections between people and communities. Today, however, the concept of the border has expanded to refer to cultural, social and racial boundaries that benefit certain ethnic groups at the expense of others. According to Newman (2007), borders are processes and institutions that generate various border phenomena and experiences ranging from the management of tangible borders to the notion of border as a space of transition and contact. Newman suggests that the essence of a border is to separate the ‘self’ from the ‘other’ (2003). In recent times, the concept of the ‘borderscape’ has been developed by theorists to refer to spaces of social and cultural interactions which facilitate diverse encounters and transformation of the identities of those entering the borderscape. As noted by Brambilla, the nature of the border as a space is that, it is “not static but fluid and shifting” and borderscapes are “both markers of belonging and places of becoming” (2015).

By using Peter Farrelly’s Green Book (2018) as a case study, the concept of the borderscape is applied to “sundown towns” in America’s Deep South, to consider how a Black world-class pianist transcends racial and musical borders thereby articulating his positionality in America during the Jim Crow era. This paper seeks to engage with the subject of ‘mobility and racial segregation’ in America and so addresses issues that are prevalent in the lives of African-Americans today.

 

Imagine the year 1962. You are driving a Chrysler Dodge, on a road trip from Harlem, New York to visit family in New Orleans, Louisiana during the era of the Jim Crow laws. Firstly, for this 125-plus mile journey it is imperative that you leave home at the crack of dawn; for traveling through the rural Southern states of Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, as an African- American, it is in your best interest to avoid ‘sundown towns’ at nightfall; of which there are an estimated 10 000 such towns across the United States which are off-limits to Blacks, like A-N-N-A, Illinois, known by locals to mean “Ain’t No Niggers Allowed”.

 

Secondly, to avoid difficulties and humiliation during your journey, your car is equipped with food, drinking water, containers of gasoline and a bucket or portable toilet for when you come across a ‘safe’ place to stop’.

 

 

And thirdly, you have in your possession, your travel companion, a bible for Black travellers, known within the African-American community as the Green Book.

 

The Green Book, originally called 'The Negro Motorist Green-Book' is a travel guide published between the 1930s and 1960s and used by African-Americans to navigate their way across the states, avoiding unsafe zones where they would encounter racial violence. This indispensable tool will provide you with a list of hotels, gas stations, restaurants and bars where Black people like you, are welcome, making your road trip safer and more enjoyable.

 

 

African-Americans, many of whom are descendants of enslaved Africans are the second largest minority population in the United States (Lynch, 2018). For many, daily life in America is an ongoing challenge due to the prevalence of racism across the country. In his article describing the legacy of slavery in the United States, Glen Loury states that America, a nation, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” began as a slave society” (Loury, 1998). Since slavery, Blacks in America represent a minority group that experience unparalleled levels of “systemic racism, discrimination and marginalization, largely through U.S. legislation and policy”, and as a result, being a Black man, woman or child in America is defined by the ongoing struggle for equality (Jefferson, 2020).

    In his seminal work on race relations in America, civil rights activist, W.E.B. DuBois, in 1903 stated that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line” (W E B DuBois, 1905).

 

The concept of the colour line according to Du Bois, refers to the function of race and racism in society (Karenga, 2003). Du Bois predicted that Black people would be faced with the problem of the ‘color line’ which he describes as “the question of how far differences of race…will be made the basis of denying to over half the world, the right of sharing to the utmost ability, the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization” (BlackPast, 2007). While the residuals of slavery include the loss of a sense of belonging, one of the main effects of racism is the loss of one’s identity.  In Green Book, a 2018 biographical drama, Farrelly unpacks a story about the racial divide in America’s segregated south, and how one man, Dr Don Shirley with the help of his friend Tony ‘Lip’ Vallelonga negotiates his identity as an African-American to traverse beyond the color line and uses music to create a space of cultural construction to address issues of ‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’.

    Set in 1962, at a time when the US displayed an obvious divide between White-America and Black America, Green Book recounts the story of an unlikely interracial friendship between two men from very distinct backgrounds, Dr Don Shirley, a cultivated African-American jazz pianist and Tony Lip, his Italian-American chauffeur, during their travels on a concert tour from Manhattan to America’s segregated South, as they rely on ‘The Green Book’ to guide them to the few safe havens for Blacks in unwelcoming regions. The film, which won three Academy Awards in 2019 for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, not only sheds light on borders and boundaries as sites of segregation and solidarity but also the divisive nature of sundown towns and their socio-political and psychological impact on America’s African-American community. 

 

In his historical account of the “hidden dimension of American racism”, James Loewen refers to a ‘sundown town’ as “any organized jurisdiction that for decades kept African-Americans or other groups from living in it, and was thus [established as] “all-white” on purpose” (Loewen, 2006).

 

According to Loewen, from the period 1890 to 1968, many towns drove out their Black populations, and White Americans established thousands of sundown towns across the United States for Whites only, then posted signs warning Black people to stay away after sunset (Loewen, 2006). Sundown towns ranged from hamlets to cities, and in some cases, entire counties and suburbs, and so since the late 1800s African-Americans have been faced with racial, cultural, social and economic borders and those who violated the restrictions were often harassed or killed (ibid).

    In his work centred on crossing racial borders, Killian states that “to cross a border is to penetrate into a social space with its own rules, norms and values” (Killian, 2013).

 

In Green Book borders are represented both figuratively and literally. Firstly, the fact that a dignified Shirley hires a casual racist Italian-American who nicknames Black people “eggplant” as his driver and bodyguard for an eight-week tour across America, suggests his intention to cross racial borders, at a critical time when Blacks are marginalised through enforced segregation. The 1960s was a turbulent decade for relations between African-Americans and Whites across America and so cross-racial friendships were anomalous.

 

While the film emphasises the reciprocal nature of the personal and professional relationship between Dr Shirley and Tony Lip, such as when an articulate Shirley helps his uneducated driver to pen a letter to his wife Dolores, and then when Tony Lip shields his ‘friend’ from racist behaviour, Green Book also indulges in Black and White role reversals.

 

This is seen when Tony Lip, a White man is the chauffeur during the car journey, with his back seat passenger being an African-American man dressed in a suit. While the former exerts some form of control leading from the front, his companion Shirley has a commanding presence in the car despite being seated in the back. This reversal of roles is again seen in one of the most arresting scenes in the film, a silent sequence when the car breaks down near a cotton field with Black workers toiling in the sun. What then follows is a rare series of events during the height of the civil rights movement, when Tony Lip steps out and opens the door for Shirley and then begins to fix the engine, much to the amazement of the field workers. It can therefore be argued that both men have crossed racial boundaries to negotiate their identities amidst hegemonic ideologies in the South and so they demonstrate their propensity to not conform to social norms, particularly those set by a white supremacist society.

    Secondly, prior to the road trip, Tony Lip is given a copy of the Green Book which offers several options for Black-friendly sites where Shirley can stay, once they cross the Mason Dixon Line.

During the nineteenth century, this demarcation line symbolized the political and cultural boundary between the Northern ‘free’ states, and the Southern ‘slave’ states. 

 

 

    Despite Shirley’s status as a world-renown pianist, and a well-respected gentleman in the Northern US states, he understands that as an African-American crossing the Mason-Dixon line, he is automatically subjected to Jim Crow laws which imposed racial discrimination and segregation against Blacks. This Mason-Dixon Line therefore represents a physical barrier, restricting Shirley’s movements in the Southern states for as a Black musician, he is excluded from performing at many prestigious venues in the South.

    In the film, Dr Don Shirley appears to place significant value on his career as a musician, despite being unable to perform classical music because of his skin colour. As a proud Black musical genius, he is cognizant of the aesthetic boundaries in music at the time, and so, rather than abiding by the status quo Shirley decides to contest his exclusion from the classical musical landscape by not only using his talent to navigate through these oppressive sundown towns but to also contribute to the creation of the borderscape actively in the Midwest and the Deep South.

 

In doing so, Shirley blends a range of musical styles – performing jazz through the prism of classical music as well as blues and gospel, paying homage to his African-American roots, thereby creating a unique musical repertoire that transcends racial and musical borders, without apology. During his tour Shirley plays at a range of venues where he commands respect from his hosts and audiences for his musical infusions and artistic abilities

 

As it relates to the issue of identity construction through music, Born (2000) argues that music not only plays a “formative role in the construction, negotiation and transformation of social identities” but also constructs new identities while simultaneously reflecting existing ones (Born, 2000). By performing in the sundown town borderscape, Shirley interrogates African-American identity and spaces of belonging and so uses music to construct his social identity and resist the political and cultural hegemony of the American south. Cultural critic bell hooks states that African-Americans have continuously struggled for improved opportunities and equality in America and so, many turn to the performing arts to defy oppressive structures of domination. According to hooks, music and other forms of artistic expression provide agency and forms of empowerment for African-Americans to move out of their designated place and push against oppressive social and cultural boundaries (hooks, 1990). As an African-American musician performing in the South, Shirley is determined to break the stereotypical mould of the African-American male, in Jim Crow America, and insists on being treated with the same respect given to his white counterparts. This is shown in one scene at a plantation house where Shirley needs to use the washroom and was asked to use the outside toilet reserved for ‘Black’ workers, to which he politely declined. It can therefore be argued that Shirley’s decision to become part of the Deep South borderscape was rooted in his determination to redefine the “narrow notions of Black identity”, and to penetrate the stereotypes of not just African-American men, but also African-African classical musicians (hooks, 1990).

    Today, almost 60 years on from the passing of the Civil Right Act, African-Americans continue the struggle for racial equality and the abolishment of racialised bordering practices in the United States. Now, it can be said that exactly 120 years after DuBois’ observation, the problem of the 21st century in America is still the ‘colour line’.