Gretchen Sullivan Sorin (Author)
Liveright Publishing Corporation A Division of W.W. Norton and Company
Physical Details: 332
Language: English
It's hardly a secret that mobility has always been limited, if not impossible, for African Americans. Before the Civil War, masters confined their slaves to their property, while free Black people found themselves regularly stopped, questioned, and even kidnapped. Restrictions on movement before emancipation carried over, in different forms, into Reconstruction and beyond; for most of the twentieth century, many white Americans felt blithely comfortable denying their Black countrymen the right to travel freely on trains and buses. Yet it became more difficult to shackle someone who was cruising along a highway at forty-five miles per hour. In Driving While Black, acclaimed historian Gretchen Sorin reveals how the car--the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility--has always held particular importance for African Americans, allowing Black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road. She recounts the creation of a parallel, unseen world of Black motorists, who relied on travel guides, Black-only businesses, and informal communication networks to keep them safe. From coast to coast, mom-and-pop guesthouses, beauty parlors, large hotels--including New York's Hotel Theresa, the Hampton House in Miami, and the Dunbar Hotel in Los Angeles--and nightclubs and restaurants like New Orleans' Dooky Chase and Atlanta's Paschal's fed travelers and provided places to stay the night. At the heart of Sorin's story is Victor and Alma Green's famous Green Book, a travel guide begun in 1936 that allowed Black Americans to join in that most basic American rite, the family vacation. As Sorin demonstrates, Black travel guides and Black-only businesses encouraged a new way of resisting oppression. Black Americans could be confident of finding welcoming establishments as they traveled for vacation or for work. Civil rights activists learned where to stay and where to eat in the South between marches and protests. As Driving While Black reminds us, the civil rights movement was just that--a movement of Black people and their allies in defiance of local law and custom. At the same time, Sorin shows that the car, despite the freedoms it offered, brought Black people up against new challenges, from segregated ambulance services to unwarranted traffic stops and the racist violence that too often followed. Interwoven with Sorin's own family history and enhanced by dozens of little-known images, Driving While Black charts how the automobile fundamentally reshaped African American life, and opens up an entirely new view onto one of the most important issues of our time.
...MoreReview Kevin Vrevich (2022) Review of "Driving while Black : African American travel and the road to civil rights". Transfers (pp. 91-99).
Similar Citations
Book
Candacy A. Taylor;
(2020)
Overground railroad : The Green Book and the roots of Black travel in America
(/isis/citation/CBB999795465/)
Book
Michael Ra-shon Hall;
(2021)
Freedom beyond confinement: travel and imagination in African American cultural history and letters
(/isis/citation/CBB148156098/)
Book
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor;
(2016)
Colored travelers: mobility and the fight for citizenship before the Civil War
(/isis/citation/CBB521196674/)
Book
Mia Bay;
(2021)
Traveling Black : a story of race and resistance
(/isis/citation/CBB818675288/)
Book
Anke Ortlepp;
(2017)
Jim Crow terminals: the desegregation of American airports
(/isis/citation/CBB518023416/)
Book
Mikiya Koyagi;
(January 2021)
Iran in Motion: Mobility, space, and the Trans-Iranian Railway
(/isis/citation/CBB040561316/)
Book
Blair Murphy Kelley;
(2010)
Right to ride: Streetcar boycotts and African American citizenship in the era of Plessy v. Ferguson
(/isis/citation/CBB252860857/)
Book
Kurt Beck;
Klaeger, Gabriel;
Michael Stasik;
(2017)
The making of the African road
(/isis/citation/CBB330382540/)
Book
Ellen C. Scott;
(2014)
Cinema Civil Rights: Regulation, Repression, and Race in the Classical Hollywood Era
(/isis/citation/CBB195877199/)
Article
Vanessa Burrows;
Barbara Berney;
(2019)
Creating Equal Health Opportunity: How the Medical Civil Rights Movement and the Johnson Administration Desegregated U.S. Hospitals
(/isis/citation/CBB415344179/)
Book
Peter Tip;
Karl Zimmerman;
(2019)
Dining a la Pullman: The History of Pullman dining Service
(/isis/citation/CBB538526681/)
Book
H. Roger Grant;
(2012)
Railroads and the American People
(/isis/citation/CBB777615645/)
Book
Will B. Mackintosh;
(2019)
Selling the Sights: the invention of the tourist in American culture
(/isis/citation/CBB321347697/)
Book
John H., Jr. White;
(2013)
Wet britches and muddy boots: A history of travel in Victorian America
(/isis/citation/CBB159811714/)
Book
Christian Wolmar;
(2014)
The Iron Road: An Illustrated History of the Railroad
(/isis/citation/CBB853269060/)
Book
James E. Sherow;
(2014)
Railroad Empire Across the Heartland: Rephotographing Alexander Gardner's Westward Journey
(/isis/citation/CBB624162414/)
Book
Jim Loomis;
(2015)
All Aboard: The Complete North American Train Travel Guide
(/isis/citation/CBB499323306/)
Article
Barbara Webster;
Richard Cox;
(Spring-Summer 2019)
Riding the Early Pacific Railroad: A First Hand Account
(/isis/citation/CBB139665525/)
Book
Chuck Conway;
(2013)
Rio Grande: Heart of the Rockies
(/isis/citation/CBB389881516/)
Article
Kornweibel, Theodore, Jr.;
(Fall/Winter 2009)
“Not at all proper for women”
(/isis/citation/CBB535534261/)
Be the first to comment!