I was thinking this would be sort of like the book about travel in the Polish People's Republic that I read recently, except about African Americans in the US. But it's actually more about how travel creates legal complexities that scramble segregation efforts. Like, it turns out that a big part of how the Civil Rights Act of 1964 actually got reinforced was through the angle of interstate commerce — though it also turns out that Plessy vs. Ferguson was a case about train travel. As Bay notes at the outset, a lot of social history tends to focus on how groups inhabit a given place, not so much how they move from one place to another, or where they vacation. But a closer look at travel, especially in 20th century America, illuminates so many different aspects of society — infrastructure, laws, leisure, relationships of race, gender, class. And the history of segregation and the struggle for civil rights is such a fundamental part of American history (as we are increasingly coming to realize...), and it's really kind of astonishing stuff, when you dive into the details.
It's a fascinating and important history, but it must be admitted that the book is a little dry. Isabel Wilkerson sort of spoiled me for reading history — I'm like, oh, it's not all riveting page turners?? This one feels a bit more academic. And though there are anecdotes throughout that give you some sense of the lived experience behind these various issues, overall the book is more focused on legal history. I bought this book, Driving While Black, at the same time, and it will be interesting to see how it compares.
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