Visit Project

Project Details

Green Book Cleveland is a web-based project that maps and documents Northeast Ohio sites of Black entertainment, leisure, and recreation listed in Victor H. Green’s Green Book directories of the 1930s-60s, as well as additional sites that never appeared in the guides. Green Book Cleveland documents Black social, cultural, and economic life, within and beyond Black neighborhoods, including in suburban and rural areas. Initiated in fall 2021, Green Book Cleveland is a project of the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University. The project uses the Center’s PlacePress plugin for WordPress (funded by a 2020-22 NEH digital humanities grant), which in this project’s case employs the plugin’s Location custom post type and Global Map block.

Subjects or Themes

African American history, African American–Social conditions, Racial discrimination, Civil Rights–History, Leisure–Social aspects, Recreation, Suburbs–Environmental aspects, Cleveland (Ohio), Cleveland (Ohio) metropolitan area

Project Language(s)

English

Time Period

Geographic Location

Project Categories

Content Type

Text, Images, Mapping

Target Audience(s)

Creators

Director: Dr. Mark J. Mark Souther, Cleveland State University; Lead Developer: Erin J. Bell, Cleveland State University

Year(s)

2021–Present

Host Institution / Affiliation / Project Location

Center for Public History + Digital Humanities, Cleveland State University

Software Employed

Labor and Support

Green Book Cleveland is an ongoing digital storytelling project that reflects the scholarship and conceptual direction of Mark Souther and web development by Erin Bell. Cleveland State University students, faculty, volunteers, and community partners research and curate content for the project.

Project Cost

Partnerships, funding sources, or grant-funding acknowledgement

Major support provided by National Endowment for the Humanities. Collaborators (currently through informal cooperation) include the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Cleveland Metroparks, and Summit County Metro Parks.