Traveling Black A story of race and resistance

Historian Bay (To Tell the Truth Freely) delivers a comprehensive survey of the relationship between travel restrictions, racial segregation, and civil rights in America. According to Bay, travel segregation began in the antebellum North, where free Black passengers were made to ride on the outside of stagecoaches and steamboats. After emancipation, Southern states passed laws requiring separate accommodations for Black and white travelers. Even when Black train passengers paid first-class ticket fares, Bay notes, they were relegated to dirty smoker cars. Automobiles offered more comfort and privacy for long-distance trips, but Black drivers could not depend on reliable access to service stations, food, or lodging. Some early airlines, meanwhile, refused Black passengers altogether. When buses emerged as the most accessible mode of intercity and interstate public transit in the 1930s and '40s, they also became the focus of civil rights activism. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided the legal framework that would eventually desegregate common carriers and public accommodations, but Bay argues that Black travelers still experience danger and discrimination in the form of higher prices for car insurance, less-reliable public transportation, and racial profiling by law enforcement. Though somewhat dry, this meticulous account proves that "Black mobility an enduring focal point of struggles over equality and difference." (Mar.)

The disturbing and absorbing story of Black America's enduring battle for freedom of mobility. From stagecoaches to iron horses to Cadillacs to the unfriendly skies, Black people in the U.S. have never been truly free to traverse the open road. In this unique contribution to the literature of Black American history, Bay, a professor of American history at the University of Pennsylvania, successfully resurrects the story of "a sustained fight for mobility that falls largely outside the organizational history of the civil rights movement." In doing so, the author effectively demonstrates "Black mobility as an enduring focal point of struggles over equality and difference." Bay shows how Black travelers have faced a mercurial nationwide patchwork of segregationist laws and practices that have deprived them of accommodation and amenities, dignity, and safety and security. In the early 1800s, young Black boys rode on steamship decks, barely fed and exposed to the elements. During the Jim Crow era, Black passengers, forced to ride in flimsy, old, dangerous railroad cars, were routinely crushed and burned in collisions. As cars entered the mainstream, new Black drivers were denied access to fuel, bathrooms, and hotels, forced to navigate an unspoken White right of way. More than a century after the first Model T hit the road, driving while Black is still fraught. In a fascinating, sometimes infuriating narrative spun with engaging facts, stunning firsthand accounts from generations of Black travelers, and potent imagery, Bay elevates the importance of the Black right to mobility in the struggle for civil rights. Not simply a record of oppression, the book also illuminates the determined spirit that underpins the fight for Black equality across the country, exploring the methods that Black people have used to subvert a racist system that persists today. A book that shocks, shames, and enlightens with critical scholarship on the Black pursuit of genuine liberty. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.