Author Talk: Gretchen Sorin on Sojourns in the American City

Gretchen Sorin, Ph.D., Director and Distinguished Service Professor, Cooperstown Graduate Program, talks about her recently released book, Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights, and how the automobile fundamentally changed African American life.

Her perspective brings into focus the true history beyond the Hollywood movie, The Green Book, showing travel as a political act. Today, the annual guidebook, The Negro Motorist Green Book, published from 1936–1966, and popularly know simply as The Green Book, serves as a poignant artifact and reminder of the importance of equality during a time in which the ubiquity of racial inequity continues to negatively shape the lives and experiences of many Black Americans. In 2018, Derrick Adams’ installation Sanctuary, at the Museum of Arts and Design, treated the same subject through mixed media collage, assemblage, and sculpture. Following the presentation, join us for Q&A with Dr. Sorin.

Support provided by Art Bridges.

Photo: Richard Walker