Historian Gretchen Sorin Presents Driving While Black

On Thursday, January 14, Dr. Gretchen Sorin shared a presentation detailing her research about African American mobility and the impact automobiles had in the fight for civil rights. Her book Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights was our December Preservation Book Club pick. If you missed the live webinar, you can view the recording below — and we also highly recommend reading Driving While Black if you haven’t already!

If you’re interested in picking up a copy of Dr. Sorin’s book, we highly recommend supporting your local independent bookstore, but Bookshop.org is a great alternative. You can also pick up a facsimile copy of the Negro Motorist Green Book while you’re at it.

A few topics that are worth following up on from Gretchen and Jay’s conversation, as well as the lively chat:

• “Hidden in Plain Sight: The Ghosts of Segregation”
  Recommended reading from one of our Zoom attendees, this New York Times article by Richard Frishman from November 2020 details the “vestiges of racism and oppression, from bricked-over segregated entrances to the forgotten sites of racial violence, [that] still permeate much of America’s built environment.”

• The Great Migration (between 1916-1970, 6 million African Americans moved from the rural South to the urban centers in the Northeast, Midwest, and West in search of jobs and other opportunities for better lives)

  • We’ll be reading Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns as part of our Preservation Book Club and meeting on Thursday, March 11 at 4:00 p.m. to discuss it.

  • Albany’s Rapp Road is a local community that was established as a result of the Great Migration. We listed it as one of our Seven to Save sites in 2016 and we continue to work alongside local advocates to support their efforts.

  • Dr. Sorin also mentioned Dr. Jennifer Lemak’s work on Rapp Road.

• “Preservation Vacation: Rock Rest, A Home Away From Home,” published by the National Trust in 2013.