BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD)– The Smithsonian Institute Traveling Exhibit is making its way to the capitol city for the first time today. The exhibit highlights one significant resource that kept African Americans safe through the Jim Crow Era.

“If you don’t know history, then it can repeat itself,” said exhibit visitor Felicia Elzy.

The Green Book, by Victor Green, guided African Americans through avoiding potentially dangerous situations.

“If you just go outside of your vehicle and change your tire. I mean, you could get stopped and arrested and arrested for being black. You know, in a location that is not black friendly,” said visitor Micki Johnson.

Museum Director Rodneyna Hart said she’s ecstatic to host the exhibit at the Capitol Park Museum.

“It’s finally here. We’re so excited to share it with everyone. We’ve been looking forward to the exhibition coming for quite some time now,” she said.

The exhibit featured everything from pictures to videos, and even interactive displays.

“It’s important that we are highlighting all of the lived experiences of the people who have lived in the United States. And this is something that we can be very excited about. It really touches on a lot of things that people can relate to, different things like entrepreneurship and history and business and understanding, like the different struggles that some of our citizens have gone through,” said Hart.

“In several of the exhibits, it broke my heart, but it also gives me hope. Of that, they brought out so many aspects of real life things that matter to everyday people, not just the big movers and shakers of society, but everyone,” said Johnson.

The Louisiana State Museum is the only location in the state to host this exhibit.

The Green Book Exhibit will be in Baton Rouge until Nov. 14.