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. Civil rights activists learned where to stay and where to eat in the South between marches and protests. Black Americans could be confident of finding welcoming establishments as they traveled for vacation or for work. As Sorin demonstrates, Black travel guides and Black-only businesses encouraged a new way of resisting oppression. 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. 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. 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.
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. Yet it became more difficult to shackle someone who was cruising along a highway at forty-five miles per hour. 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.
Driving while black book free#
Before the Civil War, masters confined their slaves to their property, while free Black people found themselves regularly stopped, questioned, and even kidnapped.
Driving while black book how to#
Cabs that whiz by only to be seen stopping for "safer"-looking people just up the block being asked for multiple pieces of identification when making purchases with credit cards being followed around a department store by salespeople and security while never being asked if they need any assistance being detained for hours and extensively searched in an airport or train station- Driving While Black clearly defines the system officially known as CARD (class, age, race, dress) and offers advice about how to handle potentially life-threatening situations with the police, as well as recourse for readers who suspect their civil rights have been denied due to racial profiling.Ī book written to save lives, Driving While Black is not just for people of color, but for anyone who likes to wear a baseball cap, baggy jeans, sneakers, and a tee shirt and finds they are often treated like a "suspect."It's hardly a secret that mobility has always been limited, if not impossible, for African Americans. And while cases where victims find themselves looking down the barrel of a policeman's gun make the six o'clock news, dozens of less extreme, yet troubling, examples occur every day. A practical handbook for people who want to be safe and do something.
0 kommentar(er)
