Thomas Dorsey with his legacy Soul Of City Maps and SoulOfAmerica website in background
About SoulOfAmerica
Keeping it real, About SoulOfAmerica begins with Informal Safe Lists for Destinations by Sleeping Car Porters and Victor Green’s eponymous Green Book. Their tools navigated Black Travel through America’s Jim Crow Era. The Black Travel Content Ecosystem stands on their shoulders.
When our market research started in 1991, commercial travel guides only listed a handful of black heritage sites in New York City, Washington, and Atlanta. One popular guidebook series that the founder, Thomas Dorsey, liked advised people not to visit the South Side of Chicago. That pissed-off him off. Like Victor Green, it challenged him to enlighten modern America about the breadth and depth of Black cultural & historic sites, restaurants, shops and arts, starting with Los Angeles, San Francisco-Oakland, Atlanta, Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans.
While working as a product manager in the computer industry, Thomas named the venture “GoWare Travel” because, like others at that time, he thought CD-ROMs would join Print as a dominant publishing media. He placed “Soul Of” in front of each city guidemap name to differentiate our Black Travel content while cracking national distribution.
In 1994, a national publishing distributor said his innovative full-color, fold & carry “Soul Of Los Angele Map” was the first of its kind sold by Barnes & Noble and Borders. Thomas also sold them in select black-owned bookstores and art galleries. Though the first public Web browser only debuted in November 1994, AOL was the commercial king of online publishing.
Shortly afterward, we published Soul Of Oakland/San Francisco, Soul Of Atlanta, Soul Of Washington DC maps and a Soul Of Dallas mini-map for a Black MBA convention. While designing the Soul Of Chicago map, the rapid growth of the Web inspired many fans to beg for our guides online instead. the World Wide Web did not become a ubiquitous distribution option for money-making until 2H 1996.
There was no proven way to monetize Web content until summer 1996, and then by only a handful of websites like Net Noir. We placed our first ad there. So Thomas kept his day job and contracted a small Web development staff. His brother Lenny helped with location research.
In March 1997, he took a leap of faith by converting the five Soul Of City Maps plus research content from travels to Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans, NYC, Philadelphia, and Houston for our website called “Goware-Travel.” As the 1st Black Travel Content Website, we gave thousands of black businesses, cultural institutions, and Black churches their first presence on the World Wide Web. Though we preceded TripAdvisor and Google, there was NO Venture Capital for a start-up Black Travel Website. VCs wanted to see Net Noir and Black Voices succeed before additional investment in the Black Internet Space.
In April 1998, Thomas renamed the company “Soul Of America Travel”, initiated “Soul Of America” DBA, and transferred all Web content to SoulOfAmerica.com domain name. Soon afterward, Sheila Umolu and several others joined our staff with ideas and energy that helped us expand beyond 15 U.S. Cities, Black Colleges, and Black Cruises. We placed our second ad in Black Enterprise magazine.
After being featured in Ebony, Upscale, Essence, Black Enterprise, and Emerge magazines, BET, NPR, Associated Press, USA Today, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and black newspapers, our fan mail and bookmarks multiplied.
Fans asked for more U.S. Cities, Beaches, and Black Tour Operators. Next, they requested Black Travel guides for the Caribbean, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Africa. Delivering more of what fans wanted led us to upgrade the website over time. They rewarded us with votes to win 4 Black Web Awards in the 2000s.
In 2009, SoulOfAmerica celebrated 15 combined years publishing maps and a website
In the SoulOfAmerica.com journey to 155 travel guides that also feature compelling photo tours, many other Black-owned websites have come & gone. Though we’ve had enough IT, Google, and advertiser challenges to make an onion cry, SoulOfAmerica.com survived by our grit and determination. Through it all, we’re happy to inspire so many Destination Marketing Organizations and Black Travel Content Creators.
Soul Of America is the first and most comprehensive black travel website on the Internet. Founder and CEO Thomas Dorsey launched the business in 1994 by publishing the first maps for travelers seeking authentic Black experiences. Before Google existed, Dorsey’s pocket-sized guides were the only resource for finding Black hotels, restaurants, music, heritage sites, churches and other cultural institutions. Today, Soul Of America offers 150 painstakingly curated Black Travel Guides for destinations around the world.
could I please have some adverting information. Tanks.
Please visit this page https://soulofamerica.com/soulofamerica/media-kit/
Then use our Contact Us page to call about or email your marketing objective.
Have loved you SoulofAmerica for decades!
Thanks