THE ROOTS OF ROUTE 66

Route 66 was one of the first cross-country road trips branded and marketed to white suburban families, and although the Mother Road is the poster child for nostalgia, Route 66 mirrored a shameful chapter in American history. Nearly half of all the counties that lined Route 66 were Sundown Towns, which were towns that were all white communities that banned blacks from entering city limits after sundown.

This talk examines the gulf between our nostalgic reimagining of the postwar “happy days” and the fabled highway’s idealized past that never was. It takes the audience through a state-by-state journey a Black family would have experienced traveling Route 66 during the Jim Crow era—highlighting the dangers and celebrating Green Book sites along the way, such as Murray’s, a Black Dude Ranch in the middle of the Mojave Desert in southern California.