Playwright Calvin Ramsey pays a visit to Washington

Published 9:55 am Tuesday, February 4, 2025

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Book author and playwright Calvin Ramsey has a lengthy resume that includes two books, five musicals, and six stage plays, which include one of his most noted works,  The Green Book: A Play by Calvin Alexander Ramsey. A stage play inspired by Victor Green’s The Negro Motorist Green Book. Published annually between 1936 and 1967, the book served as a safe travel guide for African Americans traveling in North Carolina and other southern states during the Jim Crow era. Ramsey will be in Washington this week for three performances of the play, which the Beaufort County Arts Council is hosting at the historic Turnage Theatre. 

“This is somewhat like a homecoming for me,” said Ramsey, who currently resides in New York. “I was born in Baltimore, but we moved to Roxboro, North Carolina, where my father was from when I was in the fourth grade. Growing up as a city boy, I soon learned how to work on the farm and pull tobacco and that sort of thing. My city ways were soon gone. I certainly met a lot of wonderful people there. It is very touching for me to be invited to Washington.”

The two-act play is unique in that it also shares the story of a Jewish concentration camp survivor. Ramsey said the idea for the play came about as a result of his upbringing in Baltimore and while an advisory board member at Emory College in Atlanta. 

“While at Emory in Atlanta in the early 2000s I attended the funeral of a friend of mine’s son,” said Ramsey. “While there, I met the young man’s grandfather. This was his first time in the South, and he had a copy of the Green Book, which I had never heard of. After he shared some additional information, I became fascinated and went back to the school library only to find they didn’t have a copy. But, nearby Morehouse College did and picked up a copy and read it from cover to cover, learning how people used it for safe travel in the south.”

Ramsey then went on to say, “The neighborhood where I grew up in Baltimore had Jewish merchants and stores on every corner. My mother would always send me to the stores to pick things up as they had everything you needed. They were all so kind. While at Emory, I also listened to a series of audio tapes of interviews conducted with Holocaust survivors. The character in the play is my way of paying homage to those I had met, and the stories of the survivors. The whole story just sort of fell into my lap, and I wanted to combine the stories of Black American history and that of a holocaust survivor.”

Ramsey said of all of the children’s books, musicals, and plays that he has written, this one seems to be the one that people are most fascinated with. “The play depicts how a community came together, Black, White, North, South, East, and West, to help change the laws on public accommodations and travel,” said Ramsey. “I think of it as an ancient day internet before there was an internet and serves as an example of what real ingenuity can do. It was an example of the American spirit. Young people today don’t even know all of this happened, and when they find out they assume it was from the days of the Civil War when in reality, it occurred during their lifetimes.”

Ramsey said, from childhood, he has always thought of himself as a writer, even though he only dabbled with poetry as a child. He then got married and worked in the insurance business for many years. But the lightbulb finally went off after Sept. 11, 2001. 

“I just felt I needed to give writing a strong effort,” said Ramsey. “I had always called myself a writer, but I had yet to write anything. A lot of us are like that, be it writing or some other profession and we hold ourselves back because we haven’t had enough training, or people might laugh. Sometimes you just have to step out on faith alone, and just do it. And that’s exactly what I did.”