The Negro Motorist’s Green Book was a guide compiled by Victor Green of New York City. This guide listed places in the United States that permitted or welcomed the patronage of African-Americans, which helped Black travelers and tourists avoid places where they would be driven out on account of their skin color.
Lafayette, Indiana’s Black community was not particularly large so there was only one place listed that African-Americans could be sure of service: the Pekin Café.
According to Stuti Varma of the Urban Matters Lab, the Pekin Café was located at 1624 Salem Street originally, then moved to its second location at 1704 Hartford Street. It started in 1924 as an ice cream parlor opened at the Salem Street location when Eugene Semmes opened it. Two years later, it began to offer chop suey as well as a meeting place: things Chinese were fashionable at the time, though the cultural appropriation was not always sensitive (to put it gently).
The business went through a succession of owners until it closed in 1954. Further information about the restaurant and its owners can be found at the link below, which is Stuti Varma’s history of the Café.
The Lafayette Sentinel 