For nearly three decades, black Americans had one source of reliable information about roadside businesses open to them, dubbed “The Green Book.” In 1949, publisher Victor Green wrote about how he hoped his guide would become unnecessary one day.

On Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, it’s worth remembering how driving was once an ordeal for a large number of Americans. Just as Jewish travelers once had guides to hotels and restaurants that would serve them when they traveled far from home, “The Negro Motorist’s Green Book” offered to do the same for a growing numbers of African-Americans from the Great Depression onward whom could afford cars and wanted to escape the Jim Crow rules prevalent in mass transit.

Launched in 1936 as an annual booklet for the New York area, by 1949 the guide was the only national publication of its kind. In addition to the 50-state listings, it covered Mexico and the Bahamas, included listings for tailors and beauty parlors and even provided encouragement from Mark Twain: “Travel is fatal to prejudice.” Supported in part by advertising from the businesses it highlighted, only two large corporations put their name in the ’49 edition: Esso Oil and Ford.

Looking back, Green’s book offers a reminder of how race warped the freedom that driving made possible. Black motorists in those eras frequently kept extra fuel, food and portable toilets on hand to avoid stopping in unfriendly locations. Even outside the South, roadside motels and diners often wouldn’t serve black customers. As for the Deep South itself, the Green Book spoke warnings by omission; the ’49 edition lists no restaurants available in all of Alabama.

In his introductions, Green offered his reasons for publishing the guide, and his hopes for closing the business:

There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.

With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the struggle led by King, Green stopped publishing his guide. You can see a PDF of the entire 1949 guide courtesy of The Henry Ford museum here.

Send an email to Justin Hyde, the author of this post, at justin@jalopnik.com.

A recent prison strike orchestrated by an inmate with a cell phone has touched off a debate about how to stop them from getting in. Prisoners can post pictures on Facebook and arrange drug deals. Even Charles Manson had one!

The Times today has a story that examines the many ways prisoners can obtain cell phones on the inside — “the modern-day file inside a cake.” The source for the story was “Mike,” an inmate at Georgia’s Smith State Prison, who said, simply, “Almost everybody has a phone.” And most of those are smartphones, which makes it easy for inmates to have cigars and seafood delivered to them, and to keep in touch with the outside. But how do they get them in (besides the really old-fashioned way)?

In South Carolina, where most prisons are rural and staff members have to pass through X-ray machines and metal detectors, smugglers resort to an old-fashioned method – tossing phones over fences.

They stuff smartphones into footballs or launch them from a device called a potato cannon or spud gun, which shoots a projectile through a pipe. Packages are sometimes camouflaged with a coating of grass, which makes them hard for guards to detect. The drops are coordinated through texts or calls between inmates and people outside, said Jon Ozmint, director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, which confiscates as many as 2,000 cellphones a year.

Even if officers intercept 75 percent of the packages, Mr. Ozmint said, that is still a lot of contraband getting in.

Indeed, there is a lot of contraband still getting in. But noting, even phone-sniffing dogs, are fool-proof. And jamming phone signals violates the Communications Act of 1934. The best option so far has been used in Mississippi, where a “managed access” system around prisons requires any text or call coming in to be approved. Or, the prison system could just throw in the towel and get into the smartphone app game: “People outside of prison become addicted to their phones… Can you imagine if you had nothing but time on your hands?” the publisher of iPhone Life magazine told the paper. Oh, the moneymaking opportunities! They could even help defray the mounting costs of our ridiculously overcrowded prisons. Think about it, prison overlords.

NYT; Image via AP

Send an email to Jeff Neumann, the author of this post, at jeff@gawker.com.

2010 was a great year for Science. NASA’s space plane (and the Dolly lineage) were resurrected while a secret laboratory Neturino observatory was built under the South Pole. Check out our best science stories of the year!

1. The Real Story Behind NASA’s Resurrected Space Plane
Why did NASA quietly move two long-grounded X-34 space planes for inspection? Did they want to see if they could fly? Were they eyeing a return to space via reusable, airplane-style vehicles? Here’s what they were doing and why.


2. This $271 Million Telescope Is Buried Under the South Pole
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, built over a decade at a cost of $271 million, is buried under the South Pole… and longer than the world’s tallest skyscrapers combined.


3. NASA Engineers Propose Combining a Rail Gun and a Scramjet to Fire Spacecraft Into Orbit
NASA has been working on creating a new, cheaper method to launch spacecrafts. Their latest proposal involves train tracks, a rail gun and a scramjet. Here’s what they’re trying to do.


4. A Guide to Bad Space Science In Movies
Sorry to ruin your enjoyment of Mission to Mars-or, fine, Aliens and Star Wars-but it joins a host of sci-fi movies that just can’t quite get their space science right. Here are the most common offenses and offenders.


5. Study: Daily Aspirin Can Reduce Your Chances of Dying From Cancer Up to 60%
Researchers have found a drug that’s unexpectedly effective at reducing one’s chances of dying from many common forms of cancer, in some cases lessening fatalities up to 60%. It’s a small, long term daily dose of aspirin.


6. Dolly the Sheep Is Alive, Alive, Alive, Alive!
In 1996, Dolly the sheep made headlines for being the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. She was put down in 2002. But as it turns out, Dolly’s still alive today. A scientist secretly made four copies years ago.


7. The Most Unforgettable Way To Learn About Neutrino Physics
It looks like a scene from some sci-fi epic. But for a week in October, anyone visiting the Manchester Science Festival was able to don a white tyvek suit and paddle through this wormhole of spectacular golden balloons. For science!


8. This Is How Good the Next Mars Rover’s Camera Is
The metal balls in this image are only 2 millimeters in diameter (0.078 inches). The image, which covers an area about 0.5-inch long and is illuminated by four white light-emitting diodes, was taken by NASA’s latest and most advanced camera.


9. Humans Can Only Walk In Circles and We Don’t Know Why
Humans can’t walk in straight lines. If there’s no fixed point of reference, we just walk in circles and inevitably get lost. Nobody knows why, but researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics have confirmed it in several experiments.


10. What Are Anticrepuscular Rays?
Perhaps you have seen something similar to this one day, probably when you thought you were hearing a choir of angels and the Apocalypse was about to break loose. They are anticrespuscular rays, and they happen opposite to the Sun.


Been under a rock? See what else happened this year in our Best of 2010 series.

The author of this post can be contacted at tips@gizmodo.com

Posted on Nov 10, 10 10:05 AM PDT

LG must have taken a quick look around, realizing that the color electronic paper market does have potential for another player – which is why the South Korean consumer electronics giant will be introducing two coor prototype displays which were paraded at FPD International in Japan. Both of them will measure 9.7-inches diagonally, where the first has full color capability at 800 x 600 resolution – which is the exact specifications of E Ink’s latest. As for the other model, this one does have a spot of color, although the top three quarters are monochrome at 1200 x 1200 resolution, aided by a 200 x 600 color strip at the bottom. We do wonder what kind of layout you will get with this display. There is no revelation on price or availability at press time, so playing the patience game will definitely reveal more information.

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