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SoulOfAmerica.com is announcing its 15th year provided that African Americans with exceptional, convincing, updated and comprehensive travel content. In October 1994, the black-owned company published its first print guide map pinpointing restaurants, innkeepers, spas, galleries, boutiques, churches, cultural and historical landmarks of interest to black people. For example, the inaugural Soul Of Los Angeles map directed diners to Georgia's on Melrose Avenue, culture hounds to Biddy Mason Memorial and film fans to more than 100 African American stars on Hollywood's Walk of Fame in 1994.

"The idea of SoulOf America was a dream of mine long before the Internet was popular," said Publisher Thomas Dorsey. "We were the only publishing company to recognize the distinctive needs of black leisure travelers via guide maps when print was king."

National resellers such as Barnes and Nobles and Borders carried our guide maps, which also included Soul Of Oakland/San Francisco, Soul Of Atlanta, and Soul Of Washington DC. But Dorsey soon realized that he could reach an order of magnitude more travelers, and offer more depth, types of content and timeliness by moving his content online in 1997.


Via the Web, the company pioneered showcasing Black cultural destinations worldwide, as millions have visited SoulOfAmerica.com over the years. Today, it provides over 200 guides with more than 17,000 pages and has more photos of black cultural sites than any website or print publication. Over 500,000 voters in the annual Black Web Awards have recognized SoulOfAmerica.com as the best black travel website in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

To enable its seasoned travel experts to better interact with visitors, the website launched SoulOfAmerica Community. Now fans can follow us on Facebook, tweet us on Twitter, track topical updates via Enewsletter and Blogs, and share YouTube travel videos.

"Though we've met our objective of adding the most Black Travel content, our mission is to remain the most accurate and useful travel resource," Dorsey said. "Steadily increasing visitors, the honors we've won and milestones achieved indicate that we've earned our status as the 'Premier Black Travel Website'. We encourage fans to spread the word about SoulOfAmerica.com, which categorizes Black Cultural Travel by U.S. City, Beaches, the Caribbean, International, Family Travel, Sports Travel, Black Towns, Black Innkeepers, Black Colleges, Black Cruises, Events, Heritage Tours and more."

A limited number of full-color, collectible 1995 Soul Of Atlanta and 1996 Soul Of Washington DC guide maps can be purchased at SoulOfAmerica.com