Driving While Black
African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights
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Driving While Black
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Narrated by:
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Janina Edwards
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Gretchen Sorin
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By:
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Gretchen Sorin
About this listen
How the automobile fundamentally changed African American life - the true history beyond the Best Picture-winning movie.
The ultimate symbol of independence and possibility, the automobile has shaped this country from the moment the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford's assembly line. Yet cars have always held distinct importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road.
Gretchen Sorin recovers a forgotten history of black motorists, and recounts their creation of a parallel, unseen world of travel guides, black only hotels, and informal communications networks that kept black drivers safe. At the heart of this story is Victor and Alma Green's famous Green Book, begun in 1936, which made possible that most basic American right, the family vacation, and encouraged a new method of resisting oppression.
Enlivened by Sorin's personal history, Driving While Black opens an entirely new view onto the African American experience, and shows why travel was so central to the Civil Rights movement.
©2020 Gretchen Sorin (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Nonbinary
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It changed my life!!!
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 347
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Story5 out of 5 stars 343
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4 out of 5 stars
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A strange and terrible vehicle
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For centuries, scientists believed that living matter possessed a special quality—a spirit or essence—that differentiated it from nonliving matter. But by the nineteenth century, the scientific consensus was that the building blocks of one were identical to the building blocks of the other. Elixir tells the story of two young chemists who were not convinced, and how their work rewrote the boundary between life and nonlife.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Thrilling History of Organic Chemistry
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling the story of an indomitable generation that saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Need one more book...
- By Chuck Wofford on 02-23-23
By: Douglas Brinkley
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The Killing Game
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- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Gary Webb had an inborn journalistic tendency to track down corruption and expose it. For over thirty-four years, he wrote stories about corruption from county, state, and federal levels. He had an almost magnetic effect to these kinds of stories, and it was almost as if the stories found him. It was his gift, and, ultimately, it was his downfall.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT GARY WAS MURDERED!
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Nobody Knows My Name
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 151
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 119
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Story5 out of 5 stars 119
James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name records the last months of this famed American writer's 10-year self-exile in Europe, his return to America and to Harlem, and his first trip south at the time of the school integration battles. It contains Baldwin's controversial and intimate profiles of Norman Mailer, Richard Wright, and Ingmar Bergman. And it explores such varied themes as the relations between blacks and whites, the role of blacks in America and in Europe, and the question of sexual identity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent on all counts!
- By Stephen York on 12-03-17
By: James Baldwin
What listeners say about Driving While Black
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Sam
- 10-16-24
Driving while your skin is criminal
The book gave me greater insight into why there has always been anxiety when driving, or traveling in general, outside of your neighborhood. It’s like going to the doctor for an illness, you won’t be able to resolve the problem without having understanding the reasons behind the symptoms.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Otis
- 11-22-21
Eye-opening
4.5 stars material. Great informational material. After reading this book, it brought about a great conversation with my dad. In my opinion the book really does take one on a journey. A traveler’s adventure to important historically facts on what it was like to be not looked at as equal and the challenges ones face because of others ignorance and/or stupidity. It allows one to look through the lens of someone that may not look like “you” and challenges oneself to have empathy. I recommend it.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Denver York
- 02-14-21
Needs a good editor
The premise of the book is very interesting. And it does contain some good information, but very little of it. Therefore the author repeated herself over and over and over and over and over........ The book is organized thematically but the same material, often the same phrases, are repeated in different sections which makes the book seem very chaotic. It would have been twice as good at half as long.
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1 person found this helpful