The FBI recently released its most recent hate crime data that shows more than 10,000 people reported being the victim of a hate crime, the most during the last 12 years.

“I want people to understand that it happens all the time,” said one woman who wanted to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation for the hate that has been directed at her. “These people who you talk to every day and associate with every day; they don’t look at you as an equal. They definitely look at you like you’re lesser than them.”

This woman, who we will call Martha for the purpose of this story, is in her mid-30’s and is Hispanic. She says ever since she was young prejudice seeped into nearly every aspect of her life, and the pain has been felt generations deep.

“When my grandma was younger, she was born here in New Mexico. When she went to school, she would get beat for speaking Spanish. And so, she didn’t teach that to anybody in the family,” said Martha. “She and my grandpa decided not to teach anybody Spanish. So, I don’t know Spanish.”

“I was shoved into lockers. I was dumped upside down into trash cans. I was a rag doll for people,” added another woman, 52, who also wanted to remain anonymous.

Seven years ago, this woman who we will call Kelly for the purpose of this story, came out to her then-wife and told her she was transgender.

“It led to a violent assault,” she said. “If you’ve never had it happen it doesn’t seem as important but it’s like they’re trying to deliberately upset me, and it feels threatening and that happens periodically.”

Data supports what these women feel. A study by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies found 68% of people who were the victim of hate speech or a hate crime said they experienced PTSD symptoms like numbing, avoidance, and re-experiencing.

The effects also go deeper since it is not just an attack on belief, it is one on identity.

“I would look in the mirror and say what the hell are you? It was like I didn’t believe in who I was,” said Kelly.

“When you’re younger, you don’t realize what’s going on and you feel bad about yourself. What can I do to change? What did I do?” said Martha. “But it took me being out on my own, and making my own friends, and living my own life to realize that it isn’t me. Whatever their problem is with me, and the way I look, and the way I was born, literally; it doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s their own biases.”

It is there, that simple yet profound realization, where transformation can occur. It doesn’t always come, say these women. It took Kelly 35 years of suicidal ideations to understand it and Martha more than 20 years of living with fear. But when they got there, they said it was as if decades of trauma, inferiority, and pain began to slip away.

“What led me to where I am today is euphoria, bursts of euphoria that were very intense,” said Kelly. “I would just hit the ground crying because it was so powerful, and it was so beautiful.

Perhaps this is why we call those who endure this kind of hate: survivors.

“In a way, I feel it has kind of made me a better person because I don’t hold those same types of judgments toward people,” said Martha.

“There’s no way any of this harassment could drive me back. I’m stubborn and it only makes me more determined,” said Kelly. “It’s why I’m sitting here, because it only makes me more determined to push forward.”

For decades, a series of books were bought by millions and was considered by many to be literally life-saving. One woman is making it her life’s work to document the story of these books. Their reach touches every community in the country.

There are so many old vacation memories recorded in the time of the late 1940s and 1950s, as ads encouraged families to go out on the road and explore America. Thinking back on these years of unprecedented opportunity to experience the country, someone had a question: how did Black families travel during a time of sundown towns?

“Sundown towns were all-white communities,” said writer and photographer Candacy Taylor. “If you were caught there after sundown, there could be severe consequences and even death. My innocent question was if there’s all these sundown towns, what did the Black people do? Looking back on vacation history and marketing, there’s white folks at the beach, and you never see Black people in any of these images, and there’s a reason for that.”

At night, going through unfamiliar towns so far from home, where did these families stay? How did they know if they were in a sundown town? There have been many stops in answering these questions for Taylor. On one day, the questions led her to Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia.

“That’s the original sign, but ‘funeral home’ was beneath here,” said Taylor, snapping a picture outside a building. “We’re at Haugabrooks Funeral Home, but now it’s just called Haugabrooks because it is an art space.”

There’s an important history to Haugabrooks, as one of the original sites to be featured in the Green Book.

“It was everything from drug stores to banks,” Taylor said of the Green Book. “Anything you might need on the road was in the Green Book. It was like a Black Yellow Pages. Most Black families spent weeks preparing for a road trip. You’d pick up a Green Book. You’d go through and figure out the places you wanted to stay. This was the Jim Crow era in general. The Green Book started publication in 1936, and it lasted through 1967.”

Taylor snaps pictures of stained glass inside Haugabrooks.

“There’s something visceral about being in a space that’s tied to this history. It’s almost like a spiritual experience for me.”

Taylor’s work, photographing and writing about the Green Book sites, is a project of rare ambition.

“I’ve cataloged over 10,000 Green Book sites,” she said. “I’ve scouted 6,000, and right now, I’m on the road scouting the remaining 4,000.”

Part of Taylor’s work is in her book Overground Railroad, where she details original Green Book sites like The Rossonian in Denver, Colorado, the Hampton House resort in Miami, Florida, and the Regal Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

The work is being archived at the Library of Congress and is used both for an exhibition with the Smithsonian and a mobile app Taylor is developing. She’s telling the story of the Black family on those unfamiliar roads in the Jim Crow era.

“This feels like my life’s work,” said Taylor. “I think we’ve lost our way in understanding how race and racism have led to where we are today. I felt it’s even important we tell this story now, and we look at this history through the lens of the Green Book. I don’t know where this ends, but I know it’s important, and I feel it’s bigger than me at this point.”