Des Moines' Green Book sites are gone

In celebration of Black History Month, we wanted to find out what happened to Des Moines sites listed in the "Green Book."

• Spoiler alert: They're gone.

State of play: From the 1930s through the mid-1960s, these guides served as encyclopedias of businesses that welcomed Black travelers.

• Green Books made it safer to be on the road, including in northern states where it was harder to decipher which places were off-limits to Black visitors.

Zoom in: There were six DSM sites listed in the book's 1966-1967 edition.

• Four were restaurants located mostly in the Center Street district, one was a hotel and the other a downtown YWCA.

What they're saying: Some of the metro's most prominent Black neighborhoods were destroyed by discriminatory development, Amahia Mallea, an associate history professor at Drake University, tells Axios.

• Freeway construction that was part of a federal interstate project in the 1960s, for example, took many of Center Street's homes and businesses. And federal housing and loan programs used in DSM were for decades discriminatory, a practice widely known as redlining.
• Prioritizing and understanding equity in future developments can help avoid the problems associated with gentrification, Mallea said.

💈 Of note: Historical landmark efforts are underway to save some of the remaining sites of previous generations that were important to local Black culture and history, including a former barber shop.