Travelers’ Green Book included Lake George hotels

The 2019 Academy Awards Best Picture winner Green Book recalls a pre-Civil Rights Act America where black travelers needed a guide to navigate Jim Crow in strange cities. Postal worker Victor Hugo Green created the guide to help black motorists stay safe and enjoy road trips in towns and cities across the country.

Although Green began publishing “The Negro Motorist Green-Book” in 1936, it wasn’t until 1963 that Lake George was included. The Woodbine Cottages, operated by Samuel “Pinky” McFerson, with his wife Dorothy, and The Georgian were “assured protection for the negro traveler.” McFerson’s Hotel, at the bottom of Glen Street in Glens Falls, had been a Green-Book recommended business for years.