skitch41's review
informative
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Racial slurs
Minor: Violence
siria's review
4.0
Rosa Parks on a bus is probably one of the images that most readily comes to mind when people think about the American Civil Rights Movement. Yet as Mia Bay neatly demonstrates in Traveling Black, the relationship between travel, racism, and the struggle for civil rights has a far deeper and more complex history in the United States. Bay traces the origins of travel segregation in antebellum stagecoaches and steamboats, continues on to early twentieth-century trains and buses, shows the more subtle forms of discrimination practiced in the jet age, and connects it all finally to the continuing problems faced for those "Driving While Black" in the present day. I finished it amazed at how many white Americans were willing to incur additional expense and bother—even put themselves in actual physical danger—rather than allow Black people to move through the world in relative comfort and on equitable terms. An important read.
catrobindawg's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
This book was so informative. Though I really am quite fond of novels, I could barely put this one down. As a 28 year old, white woman in the US, let me tell you I was shocked and appalled that many of the things discussed in this book I had never even heard mentioned once.
So informative. Highly recommend.
So informative. Highly recommend.
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