Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights
Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights book cover

Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights

Hardcover – Illustrated, February 11, 2020

by
Price
$19.94
Format
Hardcover
Pages
352
Publisher
Liveright
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1631495694
Dimensions
6.3 x 1.2 x 9.3 inches
Weight
1.22 pounds

Description

"Make[s] powerfully clear the magnitude of the injustices and harrowing encounters endured by African-Americans traveling by ‘open’ road, as well as of their quiet acts of rebellion and protest, which went far beyond having to find alternative places to eat, sleep and buy gas…. Deeply researched… Driving While Black is more focused on the history of African-American car ownership and travel, exploring why both have been so important to African-American life.... A scholarly examination of the history of black mobility in this country from the antebellum period to now, including the ongoing quest by whites in power to deny or restrict that mobility." ― Bridgett M. Davis, New York Times Book Review "This excellent history illuminates how car ownership provided a measure of safety and independence and also played a vital role in the civil-rights movement." ― New Yorker "Lucidly written and generously illustrated with photos and artifacts, this rigorous and entertaining history deserves a wide readership." ― Publishers Weekly [starred review] "Unlike some of the more familiar narratives―the march from Selma to Montgomery that culminated in the Voting Rights Act, or Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated anti-miscegenation laws―the story Sorin tells does not conclude with a victory but with today’s crisis of mass incarceration. . . . Driving While Black highlights the dangers of such discrimination by describing the necessities that were denied to black Americans as they traveled. . . . Her argument raises an intriguing question: Can consumerism count as activism? . . . Had Driving While Black ended with the Civil Rights Act and Heart of Atlanta Motel, it would have hewed to traditional narratives of the civil rights movement, which typically begin with a struggle against legalized discrimination, climax with nonviolent protest, and conclude with a legislative or courtroom victory. But a triumphant history that ends with a hard-won anti-discrimination law would seem naive today, especially when poverty and injustice exact an uneven toll on people of color. Instead, Driving While Black jumps to the 1990s and continues to the present day in its epilogue." ― Sarah A. Seo, New York Review of Books " Driving While Black is a marvel. It is the work of a brilliant mind and a beautiful heart. Sorin, a professor at State University of New York at Albany, dazzles with plain language. She writes in a way that academics and laypersons will both admire. Sorin combines impeccable, exhaustive research and personal stories with a seamless elegance, somehow managing to hold the object under examination far enough away to consider it fully and close enough to really inhabit it." ― Michael Kleber-Diggs, Minneapolis Star-Tribune "The sweeping story of African Americans and automobiles―a tale of mobility and mobilization that helped fuel the Civil Rights Movement." ― Erin Blakemore, Smithsonian "A riveting story on how the automobile opened up opportunities for blacks in the U.S…. In Sorin’s work, her prose and talent for turning examples into captivating stories prevent the book from being a mere sociological study of how black travel changed the nation. Instead, she blends her own family’s history, and those who experienced the black travel revolution, to make the book enjoyable and noteworthy since it shows how the changes ushered in civil rights." ― Russell Contreras, Associated Press " Driving While Black also chronicles the rise of car culture in tandem with rock ‘n’ roll music (Chuck Berry loved his Cadillacs), as well as the vast network of black-friendly establishments outlined in the popular Green Book. Feeling gassed up yet? Grab this book to-go and get to reading." ― Matt Gifford, BookPage "Sorin’s engaging account of black motoring exposes a rough road in race relations but also a technology’s impact on black freedom. A great resource for people learning about black freedoms―and the fragility of those freedoms―in the automobile era and during the civil rights movement." ― Library Journal "An eye-opening history of the terrible discrimination practiced routinely against African American drivers. . . [A] powerful story. . . The author provides an in-depth look at the significance of Victor Green’s (literally) lifesaving The Green Book . . . A pleasing combination of terrific research and storytelling and engaging period visuals." ― Kirkus Reviews "Gretchen Sorin has spent decades exploring this deeply researched, acutely felt, and penetrating study of race, space, and mobility in America―and a lifetime thinking about the issues and experiences that underlie it. No one who reads Driving While Black can fail to be moved and wonderstruck by how far American society has come in the last century and a half in forwarding the dream of equal mobility for all, and by how far we still have to go." ― Ric Burns, documentary filmmaker "With chronological sweep and intimate detail, Gretchen Sorin takes us on an unsettling road trip, showing us how African American travelers met with indignities, discrimination, and violence, and how they fought for their basic dignity. From the famous Green Book to black-run lakeside resorts, Sorin offers a powerful revision of the romance of roadside Americana." ― Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North " Driving While Black is painful, poignant, and powerful. White America cannot imagine being unwelcomed and unwanted in stopping for a meal or a motel room on a long trip. But the fact is that this was for decades the harsh reality for millions of our fellow citizens. Through compelling and extensive interviews, illustrations, and evidence, Gretchen Sorin has meticulously documented yet another disturbing aspect of racism in our national life." ― Kenneth T. Jackson, Barzun Professor of History, Columbia University "This is the first authoritative book about the actual social, economic, and political history of African-Americans and cars. Sorin’s accessible style invites the reader see how the open road looked from black people’s points of view. Interspersed with anecdotes and family stories, her history is authoritative, pungent, and personal. This volume is a ground-breaking roadmap of the black experience behind the wheel." ― Fath Davis Ruffins, Curator, National Museum of American History Gretchen Sorin is distinguished professor and director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program of the State University of New York. She has curated innumerable exhibits―including with the Smithsonian, the Jewish Museum and the New York State Historical Association―and lives in upstate New York.

Features & Highlights

  • The basis of a major PBS documentary by Gretchen Sorin and Ric Burns (first airing: October 13, 2020 at 9PM ET), this revelatory history shows how the automobile fundamentally changed African American life.
  • 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 20th 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 45 miles per hour.
  • In
  • Driving While Black
  • , the 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 communications networks to keep them safe. From coast to coast, mom and pop guest houses and tourist homes, beauty parlors, and even large hotels―including New York’s Hotel Theresa, the Hampton House in Miami, or the Dunbar Hotel in Los Angeles―as well as night clubs 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, which helped grant black Americans 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 business. Civil Rights workers 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, she 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.
  • 74 black-and-white illustrations

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(220)
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25%
(92)
★★★
15%
(55)
★★
7%
(26)
★
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(-27)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

The automobile, travel, and civil rights.

Driving While Black by Gretchen Sorin is a multi-layered book, where they author relates much of her own family’s experience with Jim Crow and the automobile, but also the important history about mobility and race. She provides the balance of what restrictions mean in people’s lives with a broad look at travel for African Americans and how those efforts connect to civil rights.
The narratives about her family and others are rich and help people see how everyday racism hurts. The humiliation of Jim Crow cars, the back of the bus, going in the front door to pay for the bus and then exiting and return via the backdoor. Moving in White space was not safe and it constantly reminded people of their second-class status. Including the reality of being out of some towns by sun-down. These are not just southern stories, but patterns in the north were also shape by de facto segregation. One can understand the unwillingness of family members to share such stories, but Sorin has enough here for us to grasp.
The automobile is a way of escape the painful reminders, but it also has its own problems, since White people resented Black people owning cars. The reality of White supremacy is interesting, since egos had to be so fragile. White people saw Black people buying Buick and Cadillacs as their seeking equality of status with them. White privilege is invisible. Black people bought big cars to cope with Jim Crow. They might have to sleep in the car, because they could not find accommodations along the road. They also had to travel with everything they needed, not just food, but pillows and blankets for sleeping. They needed a solid engine, since they did not want to break down and open themselves to other troubles. They needed a powerful engine to get them to get out of awkward situations.
Sorin presents this reality, but also in the days of housing restrictions and other problems, Black people could buy cars, whereas they might not be able to buy homes. If they got a home, they might not be able to get homeowners insurance. Jim Crow required so much negotiations. Sorin explores the ways that the Black community resisted. Buying a car is a way of opting out of the old system. Yet, people had to also develop an infrastructure for safe traveling. The Green book and other travel guides, as well as the guest houses, hotels, and lodging available along the road. People also needed eating establishments; however, many families packed their meals for the trip. Yet, the development of such establishments is also part of the resistance. It was a critical source of income for many women who cooked meals, and used money for survival and supporting the civil rights movement.
The travel guides, of which the Green Book is the most important, were also evidence of resistance and advocacy for rights. The networking and behind the scenes work to construct such guide books was invisible to many Americans, who take for granted that they can go where they want. Yet, people did research and shared what they learned. Victor Green and other publishers were creative in pushing corporations to recognize Black Americans as consumers. Not only did ESSO pump gas and let Black people use restrooms, they were also pioneering in facilitating franchises for Black gas station owners. ESSO station also distributed the Green Book, often with their own advertisement.
Given the Hollywood film, there is much attention to the Green Book, but Sorin is telling a more complex story. Accommodations for Black people varied, some were excellent, while other were failing, but we did have resorts and lodgings that not only provided middle class Black people with a pleasant way to vacation, but income for those proprietors. Sorin highlights some of these business people, whose work might not be appreciated today. As federal laws, initially Interstate commerce with the buses and railroads, reshape the landscape, people are still at risk on the road, but there is a greater likelihood to travel safe.
Yet, cars can mean accidents—that means in a segregated society there are separate ambulances and hospitals—with Negro hospitals having few beds. People died because of institutionalized racism in medical facilities and transport. Some Black funeral directors had a combination coach, a vehicle that was both an ambulance and a hearse. Still getting to where you could get medical treatment was not assured.
Black enterprises were also the safe havens for people in the civil rights movement. Many stayed in the Gaston Hotel in Birmingham and other motels and lodgings. These owners gave people space for meetings, but also were often the sites where people reunited with families when they were released from jails. In southern communities, such actions put them at risk. The businesses that supported people during an era of Jim Crow were also the first to die, as not only did the Civil Right Act open new employment for Black people, but some of those jobs involved travel and people could do so in major chain motels and hotels, which they could not do in earlier days. Musicians, athletes as well as businessmen and women, were challenged in many ways when it came to traveling before these laws.
Now we still see the dangers of driving while Black, which is evidence of the racism that still plagues the nation and shaped the daily decisions that many people of color make. Gretchen Sorin is part of the team working with Ric Burns on a documentary film. So even if you do not read the book, look for the film.
23 people found this helpful
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Important new perspective on African American history and civil rights

This well-researched and eminently readable work of history is not only a good book, it’s an important book. So much so that it is the basis for an upcoming PBS special based on the author’s findings and analysis. In a well-paced and nicely illustrated manner that includes personal experiences of the author, her family, and dozens of other African Americans that she interviewed to complement her extensive archival and statistical sources, the book offers a new perspective on the contributions of the automobile to the growth of the black middle class and the quality the lives of its members over several decades and the ways in which African Americans used automobile ownership and operation to advance the civil rights movement. Aspects of black lives and automobile use explored in the book include the degree of careful planning and execution required for African Americans to travel safely in segregated areas of the country, the degree of freedom and access that such travel provided, the types and brands of automobiles African Americans preferred and the reasons for those choices, the ways in which lack of access to adequate medical facilities posed a travel hazard for African Americans, the unseen (by whites) network of overnight and restaurant accommodations developed for black travelers (many of them black-owned), travel-related advertising directed toward African Americans, and the types of travel guides developed and published to assist them and how those encouraged advocacy for increased civil rights. The stories of discrimination in the book will give you chills, but they will also give you additional appreciation for the experience of driving while black, both in the past and extending into the present.
9 people found this helpful
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scholarly essence

Gretchen Sorin

Driving While Black

I have been reading Motor Trend for nearly 65 years, and Gretchen Sorin’s Driving While Black was an unusual article for this publication. The article has a scholarly essence, and I discovered that Dr. Sorin holds a Ph.D. in History as well as a career as a Museum Consultant.

Today Dr. Sorin is Director & Distinguished Professor at SUNY Oneonta, Cooperstown Graduate Program. My academic career includes being a colleague to many, many brilliant academicians similar to Dr. Sorin

I soon learned that Dr. Sorin’s new book was published February 11, 2020; and I recommend purchase of the hardback issue.

The Motor Trend article prompted me to purchase a new hardback, and the book arrived this morning. This is a scholarly book; however, the author is a master story teller, and the book is a fast read.

Since COVID, I have been reading the biographies of 19th century American Presidents, Civil War History, America’s Women, Mayflower (I am a descendant,) Desk 88, Building of Transcontinental Railroad, Colossus –Hoover Dam, Erie Canal, Arms of Krupp, Germany 1945, et al.

And last night I was viewing the documentary, The Last Dance (Netflix.) It is a bit of a transition to go from the Bulls to Segregation.

I am a contemporary of Dr. Sorin, and I enjoyed her research, antidotal stories, and sociological connections, and story-telling. I really did not know of the prominent role of the 1940’s – 1960’s Buicks and African Americans. The Negro Motorist Green Book was never part of my experience. Of course, I knew of Busing, boycotts and integration, but I did not realize the important of buses to the African American Community.

Because of my father’s work with the B&O, our family enjoyed family passes through out the US. In the 1950’s our family enjoyed railroad trips into the South, and a visit to Dallas, Texas. Our family never experienced the indignities explained by Dr. Sorin.

Our family train trip to Dallas, Texas seemed pleasant enough in 1955 until we detrained in the Dallas Union Station. This was our first face-face experience with Southern segregation.
Water fountains were labeled White and Colored; I had to sample both. It was the same water. However, the Colored Rest Rooms were Not the same as the White Rest Rooms. Dallas was hostile territory for our family, and I did not like the experience.

Our family was from a northern state with 5% black population. For us, slavery, Jim Crowe, segregation were abstract and historical concepts to which we had no relevant experiences.

The gemstone Interstate Highway system of the Eisenhower years, and automobile ownership, and car rental were crucial to the civil rights movement. Today the Schomburg Center has digitized the Green Books.

Dr. Sorin’ Driving While Black merits ready now, and I recommend Driving While Black
for any number of university courses.
8 people found this helpful
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African-American History through the Prism on Car & Travel History

"Looking back often provides a way to move forward."

From the brief but edifying introduction to the equally fascinating appendix, Driving While Black is an exceptional work of nonfiction. It is my favorite kind of history—that which examines culture through the prism of a specific and seemingly mundane aspect of society. Examining African-American history through the lens of the automotive revolution is both thought-provoking and revelatory, not only into what was but what is in this very moment. Perhaps even into what is possible.

From the moment I cracked its cover until I regretfully finished the last page, I found myself absorbing new facts and perspectives. Whether your interest is in the history of civil rights or of car travel in the United States, there is an abundance of well-sourced information in this astonishingly fast-paced and illuminating read.

I received a complimentary copy of this book via NetGalley. Many thanks to all involved in providing me with this opportunity.
8 people found this helpful
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Five stars are not enough!

I HIGHLY recommend reading Driving While Black by acclaimed historian Gretchen Sorin. It is truly an outstanding book, and a vital book for all Americans to read right now. As an historian, she meticulously traces the history of how the automobile and highway system reshaped American life and opened both new possibilities and new obstacles for blacks, and as a black woman she does an excellent job of weaving her own personal experiences--as a child, adult, and mother--into that history. And don't neglect the 'notes' in the end; she does an amazing job of researching history and balancing that with so many original interviews--individuals she personally interviewed. In addition, she clearly separates her own personal experiences and her reflections upon those experiences, which are thoughtful and insightful. If you've ever been in a car, driven a car, and/or travelled on American roads through American cities or towns or open rural spaces, this book will give you ways to deepen your own understanding of what you've seen and experienced, what others have seen and experienced, and how those experiences have shaped our nation--and our history of racism--regardless of your race. It's a 'must read'.
I also recommend the PBS documentary by Ric Burns that is based on it.
Vivian Peters
author OOPS! Tales From A Sexpert
6 people found this helpful
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Beyond the Green Book

The automobile opened up a whole new world for black drivers. No longer would they have to sit at the back of the bus or patronize blacks-only cab companies.

But “driving while black” held its own dangers of attacks by angry whites. Service stations for gas and potty breaks had to be chosen with care. Driving after dark was especially hazardous, and vacation trips had to be planned to the last detail.

This story goes well beyond the Green Book, which listed motels around the nation that had a black clientele. It ties the right to own and drive a car to the rest of the Civil Rights movement. It’s very well researched, and the author pulls no punches about how tough life was for African Americans in that era.
5 people found this helpful
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Everyone should know about this time in our history

What a amazing story. Please read this book and pass it on to others. We need to understand this time so we can stop the back slide we are experiencing right now. Thank you Dr. Sorin
3 people found this helpful
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LOVE

I watched the documentary on PBS and ordered the book right after watching it. I learned so much and I loved this book! Definitely a must head and will be passing it along to others like me who did not learn African American History growing up.
2 people found this helpful
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Great book; an eye-opener for the white reader

Excellent book to discuss issues experienced by the black traveler from Reconstruction through to the modern day, with a strong focus on the automobile era from the 1920's to present. I suggest getting a facsimile edition of the Green Book, as this book makes heavy reference to the GB and its contents. Author delves into more contemporary issues in the Appendix, which are useful after reading the body of the book.
2 people found this helpful
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Driving While Black is Gretchen Sorin's Gift to the world...

I wish I had the eloquence to express my deep and sincere gratitude for the profound gift that Driving While Black is to the world. I read the print copy quickly, so I could pass it on to others in my household. However, I also listened to it on audiobook, and hearing Sorin read the introduction gave it even more resonance. Janina Edwards is also a fantastic narrator and made the listening, especially to some of the harder revelations, a little easier.

I listened to much of the book through the car stereo, while driving around, sometimes through towns that are notorious for racial profiling, and at other times on highways where state troopers lurk, almost like predators lying in wait for prey. I cannot tell you how profoundly meta it was to listen to Driving While Black whilst "driving while black" in New Jersey!
2 people found this helpful

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