Mary’s blog

So I was away on puppy-sitting duties and then my boss was away on vacation. So. While she was gone I did this:

watched the American Experience (Truman) to see the sign for Fredericksburg.

That signed mentioned the Hotel McGuire as a “negro-friendly” stop. So then I found the Negro Motorists Green Book and thankfully it was the entire book (in pdf) from 1949! Flip to Virginia..Fredericksburg…and there it was. The Hotel McGuire 521 Princess Anne St.

My boss says her husband said the Hotel McGuire closed in the 1860s…but I’m thinking this is either a new Hotel McGuire or he was thinking of a different one. I found a census (or something like the census) on the UMW Hist. Pres. site from the 1930s and some of the people listed worked at the Hotel McGuire…so it was there.

I also found some more journal/magazine articles on Jim Crow-era Travel and some newspaper articles on segregated travel and exposing the inequality.

My job for this next week is to try and get the footage from the show, try and find the Hotel McGuire in history, and to start putting together the info in a way that makes sense to people who aren’t me (haha).

This is fun. (No really I mean it’s actually fun)