![]() UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Could I see some ID?ĭEGGANS: Experts like West, largely African American, are the voice of the film. SORIN: It allows us to understand the way that African Americans have moved forward in this country and the way that African Americans have been pushed back.ĭEGGANS: And the drama of this story is summed up by historian Christopher West.ĬHRISTOPHER WEST: I think it's really, really tough for the majority of Americans to begin to even understand the gut-wrenching horror that is driving in a racist society. She developed the film with director Ric Burns based on her book "Driving While Black: African American Travel And The Road To Civil Rights." GRETCHEN SORIN: Mobility is essential to freedom.ĭEGGANS: That's historian Gretchen Sorin. (SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "DRIVING WHILE BLACK") NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says that after watching it, you might never look at your car the same way again.ĮRIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: The film "Driving While Black" offers an idea that's both eye-opening and surprisingly simple - that much of the nation's turmoil over slavery, racial issues and civil rights connects to the ability of Black people to move freely through the country. Sorin combines impeccable, exhaustive research and personal stories with a seamless elegance, somehow managing to hold the object under examination far enough away to consider it fully and close enough to really inhabit it.Tonight, PBS debuts "Driving While Black." It's a documentary that posits major events, like the Civil War or the civil rights movement, are connected to the ability, or lack thereof, of Black Americans to travel. She writes in a way that academics and laypersons will both admire. Sorin, a professor at State University of New York at Albany, dazzles with plain language. It is the work of a brilliant mind and a beautiful heart. Blacks who traveled, within their town or outside of it, encountered violence and were killed sometimes, as we are today. Blacks could not drive through certain cities or stay past 6 p.m. Gas stations, restaurants, hotels and repair shops often refused service to black customers or mistreated them. After the automobile arrived, in order to stem revenue losses, trains and buses were forced to change racist policies.īut progress invites backlash, and the automobile is no exception. The Montgomery (Ala.) bus boycott worked because folks with cars helped those without cars. Educators and civil rights leaders drove from town to town, promoting their ideas in person.Ĭars served the struggle for civil rights in other ways. Automobiles became a source of and tool for employment: taxi services, hauling jobs, musical gigs in multiple cities. Cars allowed migration to industrializing cities. ![]() In a vehicle that you own, you never have to sit in the back or give up your seat to a white passenger. In an automobile, there is no Negroes-only railcar right behind the locomotive, filling up with soot. Sorin begins with compulsory travel during the Middle Passage, considers the limitations on movement enforced during slavery, examines Jim Crow train cars, racism on interstate buses, and back-of-the-bus policies on city buses, all before she gets to cars.įor blacks, cars arrived as a haven. ![]() In order to chronicle the history well, as Sorin does, one has to overwhelm. If that sounds overwhelming, it is sometimes. Sorin’s book represents millions of miles traveled in millions of shoes over more than 100,000 days. If “walk a mile in my shoes” is a way to invite another person to experience the world as you have, then Gretchen Sorin’s “Driving While Black” - a history of the centuries-long effort to limit and indignify black mobility - is that same concept magnified.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |