Fifth International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

This paper takes mobility as its central theme and calls for a reconsideration of the automobile and its iconic role in American culture. How might the cultural meanings of travel and the car change once removed from their mythic place in Americana and placed in the context of black life? The car and the ability to travel are emblematic of freedom and autonomy. What might they mean to people who have experienced countless forms of unfreedom, whose movements have been limited, controlled, and constrained? Most African-American motorists would not have access to the midcentury pleasures of taking to the open road: exploring the country, visiting national parks in the West, and enjoying the freedom of driving one’s own car on newly constructed federal highways. For many black drivers, the road became an extension of the Jim Crow world, rather than an escape from it. I provide a textured account of the emotional lives of black drivers: the fears and anxieties that arose once African Americans motorists got behind the wheel along with the deep sense of pride, the seduction, and the exhilaration that owning a car offered. I ask how does the history of the automobile change if we examine it through the eyes of black motorists, which shows us the tension between the dream of black freedom and the reality of black unfreedom, between the aspiration that one’s humanity would be recognized and valued, and the reality of that one’s dignity could be repeated and violently destroyed.