These images are from The Negro Motorist Green Book 1940 edition. The Green Book, published from 1936 – 1964, served as a guide for African Americans traveling around the country during the Jim Crow segregation era. To explore the complete issues visit the New York Public Library Digital Collections at https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-green-book#/?tab=ab…

In this cartoon, people of all sexes, ages, shapes and sizes are lined up outside the Gospel Mission, waiting for food. A mother in line remarks that they donated to this Mission just last year, inciting the feeling that circumstances can quickly change.

This is an excerpt from Lives Turned Upside Down: Homeless Children in Their Own Words and Photographs, a book written by Jim Hubbard and published in 1996. The words of this excerpt come from Hubbard’s interview with 9-year-old Brian Heflin of Alexandria, Va.

As the tsar sets out across the countryside in disguise, he meets two very different families and learns of the differing people (and their motives) living in his land.

Felipe Morales' telling account of an encounter with a blind woman on the streets of Washington, D.C. was recorded for This I Believe. The NPR project features brief personal essays in which people from diverse backgrounds discuss how their values affect their daily lives.