2. Sundown towns were threats to black travelers nationwide
When planning a trip via automobile, black motorists weren’t able to simply plot the most direct route on their road maps. They had to take into consideration whether there were places where they could stop to eat, to obtain gasoline and services, and to spend the night. The Green Book helped them identify such establishments. They also had to consider their time of arrival in certain locations, and whether that location was what became known as a sundown town. By the 1960s there were more than 10,000 sundown towns in the United States, with what were in effect curfew laws which denied access to black visitors between certain hours of the evening until certain hours the following morning, often the standard business hours of eight to five.
Levittown, Pennsylvania, was a sundown town, a largely planned community built to provide housing for veterans under the post-World War 2 GI Bill. Within its covenants was clause which read that a house within its borders could not be, “occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race”. There were several Levittowns built by builder William Levitt, who believed and said, “the plain fact is that most whites prefer not to live in mixed communities”. Levittown was a sundown town even after it began to become integrated in the late 1950s. Blacks entering sundown towns after hours were subject to arrest, and often to extrajudicial actions by residents, and the Green Book helped to warn them away from potential trouble.