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

Format: Hardcover Language: English ISBN: 1631495690 ISBN13: 9781631495694 Release Date: February 2020 Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation Length: 352 Pages Weight: 1.35 lbs. Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.9" x 9.1" 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 possib