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Far From Sanctuary: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights
A light blue Chevrolet follows the edges of the highway closely as it winds around a bend. The car is large and durable with long, sleek lines—made, of course, in America. The handsome driver dons a suit and hat. His wife clad in crisp white, occasionally glances back at two well-behaved children and the dog who sit gazing at the rear window’s panorama. The car is effortlessly “floating on air,” as one 1950 commercial put it. These mid-century American pleasures of taking to the road were almost entirely unavailable to African American motorists. In 1947, Urban League head Lester B. Granger wrote, “So far as travel is concerned, Negroes are America’s last pioneers.” No wonder. Barred from restaurants and hotels, the footloose nature of travel that the Beat Generation novelist Jack Kerouac waxed lyrical about were inaccessible to them. This paper centers on migration and movement and examines connections between black mobility and citizenship. I explore black travel patterns from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century by focusing on The Negro Motorist Green Book (a travel guide that directed African Americans to welcoming spaces) and transcripts of NAACP public accommodations cases. I explore the interior, psychological, and emotional worlds of black travelers, who like their white counterparts bickered, laughed and sought pleasure on their trips but, unlike them, experienced the road’s harrowing vulnerability. These trips' pleasures and struggles united black travelers and helped set civil rights protests in motion.