A History of Traveling Black in America from Dr. Mia Bay

With "Traveling Black," American historian Dr. Mia Bay delivers a lecture exploring the intersecting histories of travel and black experience in the United States. Drawing on the research for her new book from Harvard University Press, "Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance," Bay shares a history of traveling in Jim Crow cars, riding at the back of the bus, and navigating a myriad of discriminatory travel accommodations. Her presentation underscores the bitter resentment that black Americans felt toward these humiliations and the fierce resistance of their response, a struggle for freedom of movement.
This lecture is presented by the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County (Minnesota) and the Organization of American Historians. It was recorded on February 25, 2021.
The lecture is moderated by Dr. Maureen Kelly Jonason, executive director of the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.
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Dr. Mia Bay is the Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the author of "The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas About White People 1830-1925" (2000) and "To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells" (2009), and the coauthor, with Waldo E. Martin and Deborah Gray White, of "Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, With Documents" (2012). Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, she taught and directed the Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers University.