LIVE Candacy Taylor and The Historic Magnolia House

CANDACY TAYLOR, author of Overground Railroad:The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, joins preservationist NATALIE PASS-MILLER and The Historic Magnolia House, one of only four Green Book sites in North Carolina still in operation. Taylor reaches into her personal history to share the story of the Green Book and the roots of black travel in America. This beautifully researched and illustrated book chronicles the publication of the Green Book between 1936-1967. Pass-Miller’s family purchased the home at 442 Gorell Street in 1995 and worked over the next 22 years on it’s restoration. The Magnolia House was frequented by some of our nation’s most well-known African Americans including James Baldwin, Louise Armstrong, and Jackie Robinson during segregation. Work is underway to complete its restoration as a museum and to bring it back into operation as a hotel. Hosted by RODNEY DAWSON. [event is free, but registration is required]

Purchase books from our official bookseller, Scuppernong Books, by clicking book image above.

CANDACY TAYLOR is an award-winning author, photographer and cultural documentarian working on a multidisciplinary project based on the Green Book. She is the author of the bestselling book, Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America (Abrams Books). Taylor is also the curator and content specialist for the exhibition, The Negro Motorist Green Book, which is being toured by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) from 2020 to 2024. Taylor was a fellow at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University under the direction of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and her projects have been funded by numerous organizations including, The Library of Congress, National Geographic, The American Council of Learned Societies, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The National Park Service, The National Trust, and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Taylor’s work has been featured in over 65 media outlets including The Atlantic, CBS Sunday Morning, The Guardian UK, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Newsweek, PBS Newshour, and The Wall St. Journal. Taylor lives in Harlem, New York.
Author Website

NATALIE PASS-MILLER is the owner and operator of The Historic Magnolia House and Inn. A Greensboro native, Natalie attended NC A&T State University where she received a degree in nursing. She later became an IT professional and traveled around the southeast with her family, before moving back to Greensboro in 2018 to help her father, Sam Pass, complete the restoration work on the home. Natalie has a rich family lineage that includes her great, great grandfather, Jefferson Davis Diggs, who was one of the founders of the school that would become Winston-Salem State University; her uncle Samuel Penn, was Greensboro’s first Black police officers; and her aunt Eloise Logan-Penn, was the first Black woman to run a music program in the local schools and created the Delta Sigma Theta “Sweetheart Song”. In April, The Magnolia House announced that it would once again open as an inn this fall.
Magnolia House Website

RODNEY DAWSON is the Curator of Education for the Greensboro Historical Museum. He is an Army veteran, former on-air radio personality, and former Crisis Prevention Intervention instructor. He received his Ed.S (Education Specialist) degree from Liberty University.
He is responsible for a variety of the Museum’s virtual experiences, including the Juneteenth celebration and a forthcoming Holocaust program.

This event is sponsored by: