![]() The Schomburg Center has digitized the entire Green Book series. ![]() Cars proved to be one tool that made the Civil Rights movement successful. He could use it for sleeping, if necessary, and it provided a fast getaway in the event of trouble. As he traveled to rural sites throughout Mississippi as a field secretary for the NAACP Medgar Evers drove a large, fast Rocket 88. Civil rights activists arriving at airports would be stranded without their car rentals. In addition, civil rights workers who were registering voters, teaching potential voters how to pass poll tests and traveling all over various counties in the southern states to take voters to the polls needed cars to get around. Cab companies were segregated and white cab companies held the contracts to airport access. ![]() Similarly, rental cars transported civil rights workers to and from airports when cabs were not available to black travelers. The protesters were able to cut revenues to the bus company by 69%. People who owned cars also picked up walkers and drove them to work. Cars made the bus boycotts possible. During the Montgomery boycott, for example, Martin Luther King purchased a fleet of cars to transport people to work so that they could avoid the buses. The Civil Rights Movement depended on the automobile. How do you see the role of the automobile on the Civil Rights Movement? While it was the most long-lasting of the guides, as a group, these pamphlets shine a light on the completely separate world in which African Americans lived in Jim Crow America. My story is one of personal agency for black travelers, but also an exploration of mobility and travel, a fundamental right, seen as essential by the framers of the Constitution. The Green Book was not the first black travel guide and it would not be the last one. The Negro Motorist Green Book has really caught on as a topic of popular interest, but, I think what is most important is that it provides a window into a much broader story about the meaning of mobility for individuals living in a democratic society and the role that the automobile and the interstate highway system played in facilitating the Civil Rights Movement. How does your research frame and expand on the information already out there? I decided to do my dissertation on the Green Book, but I discovered that this travel guide was only a small part of the story. She asked me if I had ever heard of the Negro Motorist Green Book and I was intrigued. I started thinking about this topic more than 15 years ago when a colleague and I were working on an exhibition in the resort community of Saratoga Springs, New York. Driving While Black is a very extensive and complex account of the African American experience of transportation in America. I'll discuss the important role of the automobile in African American life. While there is considerable scholarship on the overall importance of the automobile in American history, there has not been an exploration of how cars changed the lives of black Americans in ways that were both significant and unexpected. Be sure to check out her reading recommendations toward the end! What will you discuss at your upcoming NYPL Talk? Sorin kindly answered some questions about her process and work. Her years of research have also been used by Ric Burns in an upcoming PBS documentary. Sorin will discuss her new book, Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights. On February 20, 2020, Grand Central Library is hosting Gretchen Sorin, Director of Cooperstown Graduate Program in Museum Studies.
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