highway

Richard Mitchell, 84, of Albuquerque in 2016. Mitchell used the Green Book to drive across the United States in 1964. The travel guide “assured protection for Negro travelers.”

(Photo by Craig Fritz / For The Times
)

Forty-four of the 89 counties along Route 66 were sundown towns, communities where it was encouraged for Black people to leave before dark — or else. Route 66 diners, motels and gas stations routinely refused service to Black travelers. In 1936, a Harlem postal worker named Victor Green began publishing the Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide to the hotels, restaurants and gas stations along the route that would serve Black travelers. More than 1,400 tourist homes (private residences that took in guests when hotels wouldn’t) were listed during the guide’s run.

For Black families on Route 66, the Green Book was as essential as a spare tire. In Tulsa, the Greenwood District was once known as “Black Wall Street.” White thugs destroyed it in the 1921 Race Massacre. The community rebuilt and became a hub of Black commerce near the route. Springfield, Ill., was one of the first cities on Route 66 to offer services to Black travelers. It was also the site of the 1908 Race Riot, which helped spur the founding of the NAACP.

A vintage photo of the Hayes Motel in Los Angeles. It was featured in the Green Book, which listed places that served African Americans during the era of segregation.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

See what remains today: Only about 30% of Green Book sites along Route 66 are still standing. The DuBeau in Flagstaff, Ariz., once a Green Book listing, now operates as a motel. The recently shuttered Clifton’s in downtown Los Angeles sits at 7th and Broadway, the original terminus of Route 66. Route History Museum in Springfield is the only museum in the country dedicated to the Black experience on Route 66, housed in a 1930s Texaco station one block off the road. It offers a virtual reality experience that walks visitors through the Green Book cities of Illinois, including sundown towns.

Beyond the Green Book, other businesses that are worth a visit include Threatt Filling Station in Oklahoma, a Black-owned gas station (and safe haven for Black travelers) during the era of segregation, and the neon sign from Graham’s Rib Station, a beloved Black-owned restaurant for many years. It’s located at the local History Museum on the Square in Springfield, Mo.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has blamed a ‘narco-terrorist group’ led by a former FARC fighter for the attack.

The death toll from a deadly highway bombing in southwestern Colombia has risen to at least 20, the governor of the Cauca region has said.

Governor Octavio Guzman said on Monday that the death toll included 15 women and five men.

There were also 36 people injured, including three who remained in intensive care as of Monday and “five minors who are out of danger”, Guzman said in an update shared on social media.

Some media reports put the death toll from the lethal explosion, near a tunnel on the Pan-American Highway, at 21 as of late on Monday.

A dozen of the victims were from a village near the town of Cajibio, where hundreds of mourners held a vigil on Monday.

The mourners were dressed in white and waved white sheets or balloons as a sign of peace.

“Please, no more death, no more violence,” Joao Valencia, 42, a relative of a woman killed in the attack, told the AFP news agency, holding up her picture.

“These kinds of women should die of old age, not have their lives taken from them in such a tragic way,” he added.

The bombing was one of the deadliest attacks in Colombia since the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) blew up a Bogota nightclub in 2003, killing 36 people.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said a “narco-terrorist group” was responsible for the attack, specifically naming a group led by Nestor Vera, commonly known as Ivan Mordisco, one of Colombia’s most wanted men.

Mordisco is a dissident former member of FARC, which signed a landmark peace agreement with the government in 2016.

The attack comes just more than a month before national elections, in which voters will pick a successor to President Gustavo Petro.

Security is one of the central issues of the May 31 presidential election, with a suspect recently arrested in the assassination of young conservative presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay last June.

A highway bomb attack in southwestern Colombia has killed 19 people and injured at least 38, the latest spate of violence ahead of next month’s presidential election.

Buses and vans were left mangled in the blast Saturday on the Pan-American Highway, in the restive southwestern Cauca department.

Several cars were flipped over by the force of the explosion and a large crater was blown out of the roadway.

The department’s governor on Saturday evening provided a death toll of 14, with more than 38 injured, but the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences said Sunday morning it had begun the examination of 19 bodies.

Military chief Hugo Lopez told a news conference on Saturday that the bomb had exploded after assailants stopped traffic by blocking the road with a bus and another vehicle.

The attack comes just over one month ahead of national elections, in which voters will pick a successor to President Gustavo Petro.

Petro blamed the bombing on Ivan Mordisco, the South American country’s most-wanted criminal, whom the president has compared to late cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.

The violence came after a bomb attack on Friday on a military base in Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, injured two people and set off a string of attacks in the Valle del Cauca and Cauca departments.

According to Lopez, 26 attacks have been recorded in the two departments over the past two days.

Authorities have boosted military and police presence in the areas, Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez said.

Security is one of the central issues of the May 31 presidential election. Political violence was brought into sharp focus last June, when young conservative presidential frontrunner Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot in broad daylight while campaigning in the capital Bogota and later died from his wounds.

Leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda, an architect of Petro’s controversial policy of negotiating with armed groups, is ahead in polls.

He is trailed by right-wing candidates Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia, both of whom have pledged to take a hard line against rebel groups.

All three have reported receiving death threats and are campaigning under heavy security.

MINNEAPOLIS — An ICE agent is charged with assault for allegedly pointing his gun at people in a car while driving on a Minneapolis highway, prosecutors in Minnesota said Thursday.

An arrest warrant in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, says Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. is charged with two counts of second-degree aggravated assault. The warrant says Morgan was working as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in the Minneapolis area on Feb. 5 when he pointed a gun at the occupants of a vehicle on Minnesota State Highway 62.

Hennepin County Atty. Mary Moriarty said she believes it is the first criminal case brought against a federal immigration officer involved in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration enforcement that surged federal authorities into cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland and New Orleans.

Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department officials didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment. The Associated Press called a number associated with Morgan and sent a message to his possible email address but did not receive any immediate response.

Moriarty said during a news conference that Morgan was driving a rented, unmarked SUV on the shoulder of the highway when a car on the road moved into the shoulder to try to slow Morgan down, not knowing he was a federal officer. After the car returned into the legal lane, Morgan pulled up alongside and pointed his service weapon at the people in the car.

Morgan, 35, and his partner, who was not charged, were on their way to the federal building to end their shift when they were caught in traffic. Charging documents note Morgan did not say the incident occurred during an enforcement action.

According to the charging documents, Morgan told a Minnesota State Patrol officer that he pulled up alongside the victim’s vehicle, drew his firearm and yelled “Police Stop.” The warrant says the victims couldn’t hear him because their windows were up.

Morgan is charged with two counts of assault because he threatened both people in the vehicle, and there is a warrant out for his arrest, Moriarty said.

The charges could intensify a clash between the Trump administration and Minnesota officials over the crackdown. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, has warned that the Justice Department could investigate and prosecute state or local officials who arrest federal agents for performing their official duties.

Moriarty said she is not concerned about blowback from the Trump administration and that her office’s goal is to “hold people accountable if they violate the laws of the state,” she said.

She said Morgan’s actions were beyond the scope of a federal officers’ authority.

“There is no such thing as absolute immunity for federal agents who violate the law in the state of Minnesota,” she said.

In Minnesota, felony second-degree assault is punishable by up to seven years in prison, or up to 10 years imprisonment if the assault inflicted “substantial bodily harm.”

The Department of Homeland Security deployed about 3,000 federal officers to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area from December through February in what the agency called its “largest immigration enforcement operation ever.” The Minnesota operation led to thousands of arrests, angry mass protests and the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens.

Backlash over the aggressive tactics mounted, and two of the crackdown’s most high-profile leaders were soon gone. Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March shortly after the Minnesota surge ended. That same month, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol sector chief who led immigration operations in several large cities, announced his retirement.

In a letter to California officials last year, then-Deputy Atty. Gen. Blanche wrote that “the Justice Department views any arrests of federal agents and officers in the performance of their official duties as both illegal and futile.”

“Numerous federal laws prohibit interfering with and impeding immigration or other law-enforcement operations,” Blanche wrote. “The Department of Justice will investigate and prosecute any state or local official who violates these federal statutes (or directs or conspires with others to violate them).”

Sullivan and Bynum write for the Associated Press. Bynum reported from Savannah, Ga. AP reporter Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, contributed to this report.