Art & History

The mOTHER Road…

The Stories of African-Americans on Route 66

The exhibit will consist of multiple components including banners, media and artifacts from Ms. Alberta’s Hotel which was featured in the Green Book and is one of the African-American trail sites in town. The media exhibit features clips from residents who share their experiences traversing Route 66 primarily during the 20^thcentury. Markers from the Springfield Greene County African-American Heritage Trail that contain Route 66 History and the important Green Book are also a part of the exhibit. 

We will also feature the Trail markers which have tie in to Route 66….there are three of them and references to the Green Book and the locations in our city. 

As the centennial of Route 66 approaches, public attention has returned to what is often celebrated as one of the most powerful symbols of U.S. culture: the open road. Since its designation in 1926, Route 66 has occupied a privileged place in the national imagination as a corridor of freedom, mobility, and possibility, popularized through literature, music, and tourism. Centennial commemorations, museum exhibits, and heritage initiatives largely reproduce this familiar story, emphasizing westward movement, automobility, and mid-twentieth-century nostalgia. Yet this symbolic framing depends on selective memory. The dominant narrative of Route 66 foregrounds leisure, choice, and opportunity while often not including  the experiences of African American travelers, workers, and communities for whom mobility along the road was constrained, segregated lodging and eating establishments, and unevenly accessible.

The aim of this exhibit is to bring attention to additional narratives of  Route 66 as lived social terrain. While recent scholarship has documented segregation, sundown towns, and the critical role of the Negro Motorist Green Book at a national scale, far less is known about how these dynamics unfolded in specific local contexts. This absence is especially striking given that Route 66 did not merely pass through communities but reshaped their economic, spatial, and social arrangements. The road’s celebrated promise of connection and prosperity coexisted with systems of racial exclusion that structured who could travel safely, where one could stop, and whose labor sustained roadside economies. Recovering these histories requires moving beyond generalized accounts and toward localized, primary source–driven inquiry.

Springfield, Missouri holds a particular significance in this story: it is where Route 66 was officially designated in 1926, anchored at the city’s central square. At the turn of the twentieth century, Springfield was home to a substantial Black population with deep roots in the city’s commercial and civic life, including business owners, property holders, and community institutions concentrated in Midtown and North Springfield. These local histories shaped how African American residents experienced the arrival and operation of Route 66 as a space layered onto an already racialized city and not as a neutral transportation corridor. 

The exhibit celebrates and commemorates these important chapters of Springfield history as our nation and our city celebrate 100 years of “the mOTHER Road!”