On August 3, 2022, Candacy Taylor and Pamela D.C. Junior presented "Black Travel and the Green Book" as part of the History is Lunch series.
Published from 1936 to 1966, the Green Book was hailed as the “black travel guide to America.” At that time, Black travelers couldn’t eat, sleep, or buy gas at most white-owned businesses. The Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses that were safe to use.
In 2017 Pamela D.C. Junior became the first director of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, then in 2019 was named director of the Two Mississippi Museums. Pam Junior has more than twenty years’ experience in public history, with seventeen years at Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center in Jackson, where she served as museum manager. A graduate of Jackson State University, Junior is the recipient of a For My People Award from the Margaret Walker Center, has been named a Hometown Hero by Visit Jackson, and was honored with the 2019 Association of African American Museums Leadership Award for her work.
Candacy Taylor is an award-winning author, photographer, and cultural documentarian. She is the author of Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America and the curator and content specialist for the Negro Motorist Green Book exhibition based on her book. That exhibition is on display at the Two Mississippi Museums through September 25, 2022, and it will be toured by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service throughout the United States afterwards. Taylor’s work has been featured in The Atlantic, CBS Sunday Morning, The Guardian UK, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, PBS Newshour, and The Wall St. Journal.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
