Migration, Mobility & Borders: Reading Response - Week 8

Allison Brown HIST 5400: Migration, Mobility & Borders Dr. Hampton October 13, 2022 Reading Response - Week 8 Mia Bay’s Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance (2021) constructs a unique argument surrounding the civil rights movement and freedom movement to travel in the United States. I found this text especially interesting as often travel is considered when we examine the Freedom Riders, or Rosa Parks, but using this lens of travel especially with trains, cars, busses, and planes is unique in constructing a through line during this history to better understand the civil rights movements in a mainstream way. Bay especially draws comparisons to the American concept of freedom and the open road, “American identity has long been defined by mobility and the freedom of the open road, but African Americans have never fully shared in that freedom … as new modes of transportation and accommodations developed, 1 new forms of segregation followed.” This lack of mobility is yet another example of how African Americans were denied not only travel on some passenger routes, or lesser treatment, but the impacts of this freedom and mobility more broadly on a population. May also notes the intersectionality of travel, as it was formative for both wealthy and unwealthy African American populations, but also the disproportionate impacts of this travel on affluent African Americans “elite Blacks were often even more familiar with travel discrimination than their poorer counterparts … the use of prestigious modes of transportation by affluent African Americans could be galling to whites, who resented sharing all but the rudest public accommodations with Blacks on equal terms.” 2 These disproportionate impacts of wealth on the travel and mobility of African Americans points also to class and wealth in the population as well as the impacts of race. Compounding these issues worsened experiences for African Americans. Moving through her argument, Bay analyzes different elements of travel and in chapter six examines how travel was used as a means for civil rights. The impacts of travel and mobility protests and 1 Mia Bay, Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance (Harvard University Press, 2021) pg. 7 2 pg. 10 lawsuits were a long process as Bay writes, “It would require a long series of lawsuits challenging segregation on buses, trains, and even airplanes, as well as discrimination in dining cars, bus terminals, railroad station waiting rooms, railway dining cars, airports, hotels, roadside restaurants, and other travel accommodations.”3 This chapter highlights the impacts of the NAACP and the Morgan case as well as Wergs Mitchell’s impacts. May writes that these challenges “although largely fruitless in the short term, the Morgan case and other Black challenges to Jim Crow laid the groundwork for the desegregation of southern transportation by exposing blatant injustices that the South’s many segregation statutes imposed 4 on African American travelers, and seeking federal support for their abolition.” By shifting to a federal level, it is evident that the struggles in which African American populations faced in the Jim Crow South were not unique to that regionality, the acknowledgement of these barriers not being tied to regionality by Bay helps to deconstruct the at times simplistic split between the Jim Crow South and the Northern or Western states. By deconstructing this, we can acknowledge that situations were worse for African Americans in the South, but discrimination and the impacts of travel and mobility were not constructed geographically but universal. Walter White’s press release on Mitchell v. United States in 1941 highlights this as “both decisions ignore the fundamental issue of segregation and provide merely for substantial equality.… The time for real jubilation and belief that democracy is being attained will come when the 5 courts unequivocally strike down all methods and modes of segregation.” A lack of travel mobility serves as an example for this segregation needing to be further than just “substantial equality’ which is not sufficient. To conclude, May’s ties to the modern day leads readers to understand how these issues of mobility and free travel impact African Americans and other marginalized groups today. By highlighting some of legal scholar Michelle Alexander’s work, Bay starts to allude to an argument of modern day federal agencies (FBI, DEA) in continuing to restrict mobility due to drug charges and the modern prison state.6 By discussing Operation Pipeline as well as the role of local and state police forces begins to 3 pg. 151 4 pg. 152 5 pg. 156 6 pg. 198 allude to later works we’ll review in this course as well as arguments that Alexander will construct in the New Jim Crow (2010).7 By ending her work with these alluding arguments, May leaves readers with ability to apply the restrictions on African American mobility and freedom of travel to modern contexts which shape experiences and livelihoods today. Discussion Questions 7 pg. 202 Bay concludes with, “These developments are not surprising. Even though the civil rights movement succeeded in abolishing the South’s Jim Crow laws, the nation’s divided and divisive racial geography remains very much intact. There’s no need to travel back in time to travel Black.” (205) 1.) In what ways do “racial geography” impact the borders of belonging? 2.) How does regionality uphold/or break down inequalities? Bay writes, “Narrowly worded, the Mitchell decision posed no direct threat to the railroad’s use of Jim Crow cars for coach-class travel. It held only that Blacks who purchased first-class tickets had a right to “accommodations equal in comforts and conveniences to those afforded to first-class white passengers.” Still, it was widely hailed by Black newspapers (and some white ones) as a decisive victory in the battle against travel segregation.” (155) 3.) The Mitchell decision shaped discourse and decisions about mobility in the public sphere, but what were the impacts of the decision on mobility? 4.) Why would the press and newspapers hail this decision as a win against travel segregation? 5.) In what ways does the longevity of attempting to achieve travel and mobility equality shape the modern day?