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"You did a lot of praying. You wanted to make sure that you didn't stop in the wrong place where you might have encounters with the Klan." - Charles Kimbrough
"You always want the best for your children and you don't want them to have to live through any of that." - Christine Kimbrough
Welcome to Cheryl's Travel Blueprint! I’m a former Spanish teacher turned travel advisor, passionate about curating unforgettable experiences. My expertise lies in European adventures (with a special love for Spain), cruising, and all-inclusive Caribbean getaways. I specialize in creating tailored trips for families, multi-generational groups, and teachers—whether they’re traveling solo, with colleagues, or leading student groups.
In this podcast, we celebrate the joy of travel, uncover hidden gems, share practical tips and tricks, and embrace the spirit of adventure. Each episode features inspiring conversations with fascinating guests from all walks of life as they share their unique travel stories, lessons, and favorite destinations. Whether you're planning your next getaway or simply love to dream about the possibilities, this is your place to explore the world from wherever you are.
Let’s embark on this journey together! 🌍✈️
Imagine planning a family road trip where a wrong turn could mean sleeping in your car, going hungry, or worse, facing violence. For millions of African -American families traveling during the Jim Crow era, this wasn't imagination, it was reality. Their lifetime was a small, unassuming guidebook that determined whether they'd find safety or danger at the next town. This is the story of the Negro Motorist Green Book and how a Harlem postal worker's 15 -page pamphlet became the most important travel guide in Black America, making it an essential survival tool that helped transform what should have been joyful family adventures into carefully orchestrated missions requiring detailed planning and community knowledge. Welcome, everybody, to Nostalgic Travel Talks. I'm Cheryl Johnson, and today I am joined by my son, Alexander Johnson, and my parents, Charles Kimbrough and Christine Kimbrough. And I invited them here because I think they have a wealth of knowledge to share with us about all things. You know, they grew up in Mississippi. And so they lived through a lot of this stuff that we're going to talk about today. And I thought it would just be really important to hear what they had to say about it. And it's just to me, it's I think it's just wild that we still have people that are with us that live through such things. And so that's why I thought it was a good idea to invite you guys on. Thank you. Thank you. You're very welcome. So should we jump into it? I think so. OK. Well, I have a question for you. Do you remember your family using the Green Book? You may or may not have. But do you remember using it or having a need for it? Well, I don't recall that we used it, but we we sort of knew, you know, by talking to other people, the places that that were good to stop and places that we needed to avoid. Mm hmm. OK. And so so you're saying word of mouth is what you used. Okay. So, and I know the book was published between, I think it was in publication from 1936 to 19, I want to say 60, 1960, were the, you know, the bookmarks of when he, when the book, when he continued to publish information and things like that. I got a copy of it and I was, we were looking over it and just looking at all of the interest. It was just interesting. They would get, it was, it was to be given away. It was not to be sold. So anybody who had a copy of it, I think he probably, you know, the advertisers, the people that had hotels and safe places to go, Those were listed in there, and I'm guessing that they were the ones that paid for their listings, but they were not to charge the tourists or the travelers for that opportunity just to have that. That was one of the caveats. But since you say you didn't have it, what was it like traveling just as a Black family in that time period? Well, as long as you knew what the situation was and you knew what you needed to avoid, you just sort of avoided those things. And you did a lot of praying. You wanted to make sure that you didn't stop in the wrong place where you might have encounters with the Klan. You know, you told me a story about, I think it was, well, you told me a lot of stories, but one of them, why don't I start with this one? The one about, you know, Emmett Till had just been murdered. Oh, wow. Do you remember that story you told me? Yes, I remember the story. I was a senior in college. And what year was that when he got killed? He got killed. It was the 50s, right? It was in the 50s because I graduated from college in 1958. And in 58, I had gone for a job interview in Meridian, Mississippi. And I had to come back through Philadelphia, Mississippi. And I was on the Greyhound bus. And it was really sort of scary because I was the only black person on the bus. And as we approached Philadelphia, there were two white ladies who were complaining that I was sitting too close to the front of the bus. So she told the bus driver to tell me that I had to move. And since I was near Philadelphia, I did not want to suffer the same thing that happened, Jane the Teal. And my family didn't know where I was, so I could never have been heard from again. So those were some of the things we had to deal with in the in the late 50s, 1950s. Yeah, that that just blows my mind that people, you know, that anybody would have to live with that. I mean, obviously, these are things that happen. You know, we have just when you when you realize that your parents lived through something like this, it's just It's mind -blowing. It's just kind of crazy to me, you know? Well, I was gonna say, too, there's a story that Granddad once told me, and it was funny because I didn't know about it until after they moved to Vegas. Granddad, do you remember the story you told me? You were out with your friends, and I don't know if y 'all had gone to the movies or what, but you were, it was maybe like four or five of you guys just walking down the street, and I guess y 'all got approached by some white guys from some place, and I don't know if there was an exchange, but you ended up like taking off running, and ended up getting shot at by like, But like these young people, well obviously you guys were all young, but I remember when he told me that I was like, wow, really Granddad? Like that's crazy. Yeah, that was pretty common. The story I think you're talking about, we lived in, we didn't live there, we were close to a little town called Ethel. Got it. And we would get somebody's car, it was like one cousin had a car, we would chip in 15 or 20 cent, he would buy gas. And they would all jump in the car and go to Casio to watch a movie. So on this particular day, we were coming back and it was a patrolman, but apparently he was off duty and he had one arm. And he started, we started racing with him. Why? It wasn't intention, but he just, you know, he passed us and we passed him again, you know, and we didn't know he was a cop. So he, our car, it was right after they had automatic transmission and the car was geared such that going down the hill, He couldn't keep up with us because the gear, it wasn't strong enough to run him on a flat level, but going downhill. it still had some power left. So going downhill, we ran off and left him, and he started shooting at us. Oh my. But he was, I think his left arm was off before his wrist, and apparently he was trying to shoot out the window. Why was he shooting? And he couldn't shoot straight. That's a good thing you didn't have to. You might not be here. Wow. I bring that up to just accent the point that my mom was talking about. You don't realize what your parents or grandparents actually had to deal with. I think it's one thing to hear about it, but when you have, I think you used the word, Maybe you didn't use the word blessing to describe having to hear before but I was gonna say it's really a treasure really to be able to have people who can recount so much history. I think one thing that's lost especially in the youth today, right? They don't they don't ask what like they they don't not I shouldn't say all Not not all but a lot of young people seem to not really care so much about about getting these jewels from the people that can really give it to them. I think we're all guilty of that because I think we don't appreciate the things that our parents before us went through. And I would say, especially in your generation to ours, such a drastic difference because of the Jim Crow laws and all of those things. By the time I was, I mean, even though those things were still going on when I was born, i don't think i was well obviously i wasn't born in the south either so that was that was a big part of it but well i'm not so sure that this was happening all over. But as a young lady, especially sometimes, I mean, I'm talking early afternoon, you know, after you've gotten out of school, walking home alone was not really a good thing for a young lady to do, because I have been were scared out of my life, practically. Just walking home from school in this car with these white boys were, I know they were just trying to scare me. But, you know, if you're by yourself, it's not a very good feeling when they're driving past you and yelling insults and what they're going to do to you. So those are those were common things that we had to deal with. And you talked about walking. They had school buses. We didn't have school buses. We had to walk to school. For me, it was two and a half miles to school. Uphill both ways? Yeah. Twice a day. And we would have to make a fire because we didn't have electricity or gas or anything like that. When we got to school, we had to go and find wood and make a fire. Oh, my goodness. How many kids were in your school? Uh, it wasn't very many. It was at school. It was a little bigger than this room here. Wow. And was it several grades? It was like a one room schoolhouse? Eighth grade. Oh, everybody was in the same room. It was only one room. one room. One teacher usually. But I'm a little more fortunate than he because we did have a school bus. Actually, my older brother used to drive the school bus. And then after he wasn't driving anymore, then I went to live with my aunt who lived in the town. It was quite different from being in that one room schoolhouse. Wow. Times have changed for sure. Oh, yes. Thank God. Yeah. Well, I remember looking we were looking through that book last night and we noticed because you went to the town to Holly Springs, which is where you both went to college. And we found a couple of locations in the motor in the in the Green Book. And what was the name of that place that we found? It was something that started with a C. Clark's. Clark was a real entrepreneur. He owned a custard stand, sandwich shop, hotel. He was like big mucky mucky for the whole town. And taxi service, right? And taxi service, yes. And you told us a story about what happened at that place at one time. I was going to college, and he had a, the customer stand was right at the corner. You walk off the campus, and before you got to the end of the block, there was his customer stand right on the corner. Me and my friend, Apple Jones, I don't know, he was some kind of person, I'm telling you. I'm standing with my back toward the street, and his back, his face is facing the street. The cop comes out of the parking lot. comes up, the gun right by my head and pointed at Abba and said, I ought to shoot you. And Abba says, call, he called him a little dirty. He said, you better not miss or I'll beat that. He put the gun back, he got back in his car and left. Wow. But you had to know Albert. He was not afraid of anything. Wow. Well, that's a good thing. That probably saved him. Probably saved us, yeah. Yes. I don't think he expected that response. Probably not. But didn't you also say that he was drunk? The cop was drunk? I think he was drunk. There was another case, the one that was shooting at us in the car was drunk. He followed us until we got to our part of town where it's a Cafe he walks up and it was a guy named Charles Smith pointed a gun at him and he gave him the same treatment He started cussing at him. Mm -hmm. And after he he got tired and we couldn't scare us He wasn't talking to me. He was talking You don't have time to get scared. Anyway, so after he left he says what was wrong with you? Why were you talking back? He's man. I could see clear through that guy Wow My goodness see and so like I knew one of those stories of the ones that you told I knew the one that I only knew that one story that you told and only the one about the Clark's the the cop that threatened to shoot you. The other ones, that's news to me. This is just, you know, I wish I had known all of this before. Could write a book with all of this, don't you think? Yeah, I've had a few close calls. And there was one occasion, we had come from Ocasio -Cortez and we took the bus, I guess, but anyway, we got off at Ethel and we had to walk like half a mile Black part of town. Mm -hmm. And all of a sudden we hear these like four or five guys running up But we wouldn't pay it any attention. We didn't know they were after us, but They caught up to us and and then all of a sudden is oh, we didn't know you were we thought you was somebody else But what they we figured what they figured out one of the guys that was with had already killed somebody And they wanted no part of that. What a life you have led, my goodness. Yeah, his brother had just come back from the Navy and this was in the early late 50s. And he was a frog man in the Navy, which is very rare for a black person. He was meaner than a junkyard dog. Well, I'm sure that experience probably made him that way. Yeah. But the background is he was in Athol and this white guy came up and attacked his friend. So he took the opportunity at that time, he didn't use a gun, he used a knife. He took his knife out and killed him, cut him all up. And his brother went to prison and was ill -executed. Really? So everybody knew the Dobbs after that. It gave them reputation. And that's who I was with. So they didn't want to mess with me, they didn't want any parts of that. They figured out who it was, he caught up to us. They pretended they were looking for somebody else. Wow. That is, yeah, I didn't know all of these stories. But I think all of these stories illustrate why it was important for black travelers to really be careful, especially in the South, you know? Yes, because you could not just go to the hotel, the local hotel. So you had to have some other place that you could stay. Or you better have your tent pitch in the woods and sleep. But that couldn't have been any safer, having to go into the woods. Well, it depends. You wanted to make sure you didn't go into the woods where somebody had their whiskey still. Yeah. I hadn't even thought of that. Wow. Okay, so lots of lots of landmines. Oh, you have to navigate with that. Oh, yeah, situation. So when you when you went on trips, what did you do? Well, you had to make sure that you you you packed your lunch. And it depends on how far you were going. But you you needed to have food to last you. Because if you did get to a restaurant, where they would serve you, you would have to go stand at the back door and wait. But most people just made sure that they had their own food. And you would have to plan ahead as to where you're going to stay. Most people would probably have family who lived someplace, so you would try to get to the place where your family lived, so you would have someplace to sleep. And so slowly this changed over time. Do you think the Civil Rights Act of 1964, did you notice a difference at that point? Or was it still in the South? Was it still the same? Things started to change. to gradually change. Martin Luther King and all of the civil rights leaders had a lot to do with that. Because it used to be that even with entertainers, they weren't allowed to just go and, they were okay to go and perform for white audiences, but they had to choose where they were going to live too. Sometimes they would end up sleeping in their cars or buses or whatever transportation they had. And they were just like us as far as being able to find places to eat. So it was not an easy time. Absolutely not. How do you think younger generations should understand this history? Well, it's nice if they have someone like a grandparent or some other relative who happened to have lived the life to be able to talk to them about it. My experience was, as a teacher, talking to students and the students telling me, black students telling me, there's no way I would have taken that. I would just not have dealt with that. And I don't think that they quite understood what the situation was really like. So somewhere along the way, things have, you know, I don't think they made the connection between coming from slavery into the modern era. And it just, it's hard for them to understand that they would not end up dead. And I think one good thing about that is that that's what their ancestors wanted, for them to feel safety. And so from that perspective, that's a good thing. But it's also super important that they know and understand the reasons for... And to understand how important it is to make sure that everybody has freedom. And for instance, the first time, when I was old enough to vote in Mississippi, you had to pay a poll tax if you wanted to vote. And they made it as hard as possible. But that was one of the things that came out of the civil rights movement. The elimination of the poll tax. Right. So I'm curious, how did your experiences shape the way you raised your own children? This is gonna be good. So I have, I have a two siblings and I'm the middle child. So how do you guys think that your experiences impacted how you raised us? Well, you know, because you always want the best for your children and you don't want them to have to live through any of that. And you do all that you can to try to protect them. And sometimes I don't think your children understand why you are being so hard on them. And it's because you know what's out there, and you just don't want them. to have to go through that because you would do anything to protect your child. Absolutely. Well, I'm thankful. Yeah, I think one of the things that motivated us was at the time we were taught from our parents, they wanted us to be have a better life than they had. So we were fortunate. A lot of people my age didn't fare so lucky. But they always taught us to save money. and to be self -sufficient. So, it was instilling us to be careful how you spend your money, save for the future, and... And who you hang with. Yeah. So, we all strived to make sure we would be able to afford a house. That was the number one thing. Because from their parents, they didn't have a house. They didn't have something that was passed down from the from the previous generation. They started from scratch and never owned any property or anything. But fortunately, my parents were, again, I was lucky. They did finally get a house, but I was fully grown and out of the way, gone away. And so we wanted to make sure that our kids had the same thing. or at least be better than what we had. And you guys are, I should mention, that you guys are part of the Great Migration to the North, from Mississippi, made it all the way to the Midwest, where there were lots of job opportunities, and you followed your parents to Milwaukee. Yeah. I graduated from high school in I was fortunate again, the principal of my school had put in a word for me to go to college. I was out of school for six months and she called me and asked me if I wanted to go to college and I said, yeah. And she says, okay, gave me the name of the school and to show up. So I left. I had worked for six months after I got out of school at a sawmill. And I'm telling you, it was hard. I always wanted to work there. But once I got there, and it's something called a green chain. They cut the lumber in different lengths and they put it on like a floating bridge after it's cut and it's all different shapes and sizes and it's on a platform chain and it's floating towards you. And your job is to separate it and sort it between the length and the size. So me and Mr. Damon, Damon must be 250 pounds, big guy. And I'm not. I maybe weigh 140 pounds. He goes on vacation. Oh, no. And I'm there by myself. And the stuff is crawling. And I'm pulling it out. And once it gets past you, it gets double trouble because you got to come around it. It's stacked up to the end, and it's all getting crumbled up together. And you've got to get it, hopefully, between the time that the next slot comes out, you can clear it off. But that's what I was struggling with for two weeks. I had that by myself. And that's when I got the call that my teachers told me I could go to school. So you made a beeline for that school. My situation was just a little bit different because Uncle Luke, you remember Uncle Luke, was friends with the band director. And he just really believed in education. And my mother died when I was six years old. But he told me that she had made him promise that he would look after her children. And he was determined that whatever opportunities were out there, we had to pursue them. And he always instilled in us that we needed, really needed to go beyond so that we could surpass where they were because they didn't have those opportunities. My brother was the first from our part of the family. He was the first to graduate from college, and I was the second. Okay, so you made your parents proud, both of you. Well, there's no doubt. Yeah, for sure. Well, I want to thank you both for coming in and talking to us about your experiences because I thought I knew a lot, but I learned a lot today. You have to learn how to ask the questions. Yes, I have to ask the right questions, for sure. So that's why we're here today. So the Green Book wasn't just a travel guide. It was a testament to resilience, community, and the determination to maintain dignity in the face of systematic oppression. These stories matter because they remind us. that progress isn't inevitable. It's fought for and won by ordinary people making extraordinary choices. If this episode moves you, I challenge you to do three things. First, share these stories with someone younger than you. Second, support Black -owned businesses in your community today. Carry on that tradition of economic empowerment. And finally, if your family has similar stories from this era, record them. Sit down with your elders, ask the hard questions, and preserve these voices before they're lost forever. History isn't just what happened. It's what we choose to remember and pass on. The Green Book listed everything from hotels and restaurants to beauty salons and drugstores that would serve African -American customers safely. So I thank you all for joining us and I hope you stick around for the next episode.