Registration now closed

Documentary Screening: The Green Book - Guide to Freedom

In celebration of The Negro Motorist Green Book Exhibit

We are excited to host a documentary screening and talkback of The Green Book: Guide to Freedom during the opening week of The Negro Motorist Green Book, at the historic MLK Library.

In partnership with the Double Exposure Film Festival and the DC Public Library Foundation, learn how The Negro Motorist Green Book helped African-Americans navigate the roads of a segregated nation. Immediately following the film, join us for a conversation with documentary film director and screenwriter Yoruba Ruchen. 

For reasonable accommodations, please contact the Center for Accessibility at 202-727-2142 or DCPLaccess@dc.gov. For ASL or tactile interpretation, please allow at least seven (7) days notice.

Learn more about the film below.

The Green Book: Guide to Freedom

In the 1930s, a black postal carrier from Harlem named Victor Green published a book that was part travel guide and part survival guide. It was called The Negro Motorist Green Book, and it helped African-Americans navigate safe passage across America well into the 1960s. Explore some of the segregated nation's safe havens and notorious "sundown towns" and witness stories of struggle and indignity as well as opportunity and triumph.

About the Director

Yoruba Richen is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has been featured on multiple outlets, including Netflix, MSNBC, FX/Hulu, HBO, and PBS. Her most recent film The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and won a Peabody Award. It is currently streaming on Peacock. Other recent work includes the Emmy-nominated films American Reckoning (Frontline), How It Feels to Be Free (American Masters), The Sit In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show (Peacock), and Green Book: Guide to Freedom (Smithsonian Channel).

She directed an episode of the award-winning series Black and Missing for HBO and High on the Hog for Netflix. Her film, The Killing of Breonna Taylor won an NAACP Image Award and is streaming on HULU. Her previous films, The New Black and Promised Land won multiple festival awards before airing on PBS’s Independent Lens and P.O.V. Yoruba is a past Guggenheim and Fulbright fellow and she won the Creative Promise Award at Tribeca All Access. She was a Sundance Producers Fellow and Women’s Fellow and is a recipient of the Chicken & Egg Breakthrough Filmmaker’s Award. Yoruba is the founding director of the Documentary Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. She founded Promised Land Film, which focuses on producing nuanced, compelling documentary films that illuminate issues of race, space, and power.

In Conversation with

Tammy L. Brown is a writer, educator, and artist. She earned her B.A. in international history, magna cum laude, from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in American history and African diaspora studies from Princeton University. As associate professor of history at Howard University, Tammy’s teaching, writing, and service to her community are connected through her interest in art, technology, and biography as a methodological approach.

Dr. Brown’s research, writing, and art range from historical studies to abstract paintings and multimedia poetry. Tammy's research on race, feminism, art, and politics has been featured in various media outlets including TEDx, the American Civil Liberty Union's blog, NPR, and Vox.com. Dr. Brown’s selected awards include the Heanon Wilkins Faculty Fellowship and the Lavatus Powell Outstanding Faculty Diversity Award at Miami University, and a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities.

About The Negro Motorist Green Book Exhibition

The Negro Motorist Green Book, an exhibition developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) in collaboration with award-winning author, photographer, and cultural documentarian, Candacy Taylor, offers an immersive look at the reality of travel for African Americans in mid-century America and how the annual guide served as an indispensable resource for the nation’s rising African American middle class and evidence of a vibrant business class. DC Public Library is producing a section of the exhibit on DC and the Green Book.

Click here to learn more about the Exhibit

The Double Exposure Film Festival

Double Exposure, a project of the investigative news organization 100Reporters, celebrates the finest new films inspired by the investigative instinct. It combines film screenings for the public with a professional symposium for journalists and visual storytellers.

Moving towards its tenth edition, DX does more than just identify and celebrate a new genre of filmmaking. It casts this vital body of work toward recognition as a coherent artistic vision. It connects audience appreciation for creative output to the rights of reporters and filmmakers to pursue investigations in the public interest; it ties stirrings of artistic curiosity to practical consequences and groundbreaking storytelling to policy changes.

Program Partners

The DC Public Library Foundation

The DC Public Library Foundation was founded in 1985 to coordinate funding for a mural of Martin Luther King, Jr. and has since secured and administered over $4M in funding for DC Public Library programs, with literacy and children’s programs as key focus areas.  Click here to learn more about this mural and its artist, Don Miller.

The District of Columbia Public Library itself was created in 1896 by an act of Congress and is dedicated to providing environments that invite reading, learning and community discussion, and opportunities for lifelong learning. The first branch of the DC Public Library was built in 1911 in Takoma Park. Soon after, additional facilities were added. The library system now includes 24 neighborhood libraries — three of which were Carnegie built — and one central library.

For over 100 years, DCPL has played a major role in serving all District residents – from the most affluent to those struggling to survive.  The Library is proud to be a recognized force in the community for engaging the mind, expanding opportunities and elevating the quality of life.

The Foundation has raised substantial funds to support such programs as the library’s Summer Reading program; citywide initiatives to support early literacy, such as “Sing, Talk and Read,” which helps young parents learn the importance of using books to interact with their babies; computer training classes, especially for job seekers; and programs serving the Spanish-speaking population and those in need of special services such as the deaf or visually impaired. Additionally, the Foundation increases collections to help the library provide the best and newest books and other materials and increases library patrons’ access to emerging technologies.

Upcoming events