Back then, there were few options.
But Bay Shore was like a mecca for young Reginald, he recalled, complete with a merry-go-round and bumper cars.
When Robinson was trying to point out the spots to his wife a little over a decade ago, however, he couldn’t quite remember.
The “Negro Motorist Green Book,” more commonly referred to as “Green Book,” was created by Victor Hugo Green, a Black mailman from Harlem in New York City.
Travel guides popped up to help African Americans safely navigate through that landscape.
“There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published,” the authors wrote in the 1948 edition, according to History.com.
About five years ago, Hellman was chatting with a former graduate school friend, Catherine Zipf, now a historian in Rhode Island.
Since then, Hellman — who does the work outside her day job for the city of Alexandria — has found 315 sites in Virginia by poring through digital copies of the books available through the New York Public Library.
The University of Virginia also has come on board recently and will serve as the new home of the data, not just for Virginia but eventually nationwide when enough volunteer historians can be recruited to do the same for their states.
Ye Single Inn, for example, was a restaurant in Phoebus in the late 1930s, according to Hellman’s research.
Robinson still lives in Richmond where he runs a small cleaning company, but travels to Hampton often.
“You can walk in the sand, eat at the restaurant, sleep in a room.