Driving While Black by Gretchen Sorin--a book review and some reflections

 Full disclosure: I grew up with a father who loved to drive and road trips were our thing.  So I have spent many a day traveling.  My Dad's way of planning a trip (especially just a weekend drive) was driving until there was a fork in the road, asking for a concensus of "left" or "right" and that's the way we went. Where, how and when we would go was not really a thing to consider.

That is not how one travels when they are 

 

 

This book was eye-opening to me.  Part memoir, part well-documented research, it tells the story of the what it was like to be black and travel, mostly by car, from the early sixties until today. Even with my knowledge of Jim Crow South, I had not considered how difficult just going to visit relatives or travel for work was.  The statistics of car ownership, motel accessibility, who would advertise in the Green Book, police stops, etc were so informative.  Balancing those statistics with her own family stories or stories of other travelers made them accessible.  I learned from this book.  I got angry with this book.  I more fully appreciated what the parents of black friends must have experienced and I was shocked that I didn't know.  That was the main thing I walked away from this book thinking, "how did I not know?"

I understood things from my childhood that I before reading this book, I didn't even realize I didn't understand. Why was one black family criticized for their 'uppity' Cadillac and why was another black family admired for theirs? A subtle perception of who had earned theirs? I see those subtlties now that I never noticed as a child.  That was one of the strengths of this book--her story. The author, in hindsight, recognizes many of the indignities that her parents endured, that they covered from her and her brother. So where her memories are of great road trips to see her grandparents, she now sees how orchestrated that trip was to keep them all safe. It worked similarly for me. I looked back and saw struggles and indignities that I did not recognise as existing before.  The difference is that I look at it from the position of privilege, so I have to own the fact that some of those indignities were perpetuated by people I care about, and all of those indignities were instigated by people who look like me. And that is difficult to process.  This book may have intended to inform, and it did that well.  But it also held up a mirror that caused me to evaluate some memories that were long forgotten.

I remember discovering that my mother's sophomore school yearbook had two sections: the front section where her pictures were and the 'colored' section at the back.  That was my first comprehension that there had ever been separate schools in my little hometown.  I learned that what was now the Kindergarten had once been the Colored School. I struggled to imagine. But, as we are prone to do as children, I put that down as 'ancient history' even if it was actually only six years before my birth! Because surely none of that happened recently. This book made that history my history. Traveling While Black speaks of the dangers of traveling in the South because of the dangers of the Klan. My first gut reaction was that was Mississippi or Alabama, but not in my quiet part of Texas.  Immediately I remembered a day just three years ago. I met my Dad in a nearby town for us to travel together to another community's street fair.  We were leaving my car at the courthouse.  Dad called me over and pointed to a corner building facing the courthouse.  He asked if he had ever told me about that building and shook my head.  He said that it had been a friend's restaurant for years.  I nodded as if I was interested, but honestly it was ancient history to me.  Then he said, "See that plaster up there?" I nodded and he said that was where they had to plaster over the bricks, because KKK was spelled out in the brick design and it couldn't be painted over.  Now, he had my attention.  The KKK met here? In this sleepy, little West Texas town that I had been to many times. That "history" happened here?  He then  quietly said,"It wasn't that long ago, I remember seeing it."  Even with all the reading and self-reflecting I have done, I had not articulated in my head that that Southern history happened in my back yard.  This book helped me bring that memory to life and recognize that the dangers had been, and still are, right here.

Another travel memory that this book brought to mind was from the early-1970s when we traveled to California to visit family.  It was summer. I remember that the plan was to cross the desert at night to be cooler. My brother and I would have slept in the back of the station wagon (pre-seat belt days). I remember waking up because we had stopped and my Mom telling me to stay down.  We had stopped because there was an accident and Dad had gone to see if they needed help. The van was on fire and the fire truck and ambulance soon arrived. So Dad came back to the car, but he was furious. Apparently one of the others who had stopped to 'help' had asked what the race of the person in the van was and made a disparaging remark that if the person was Native American (not the word used) they could "let them burn" but since he was black (also not the word used) they should save them. They had pulled the man to safety before the ambulance got there. Dad was furious at the inhumanity shown. I remember being shocked at how mad he was because, as much as I loved him, he was known for compartmentalizing race. Looking back I'm relieved that he really did value life over racial separation, but it makes me uneasy that I remember that moment with surprise. That memory was long buried until reading the sections about finding healthcare if a traveler had an accident on the road.  I wanted to read those sections and say it couldn't be true. But my own memories testify that getting help when non-white was real. I have to acknowledge the reality that something I take for granted was not granted to others. And that makes me both uneasy and angry.  

I appreciate this book.  I will revisit it.  As someone who loves to travel, I need to remember that travel has often been a privilege. I appreciate that this book brought history near, that it caused me to actually see some of the inequality I have witnessed and to struggle with that. I'm still "sitting with that uneasiness" because I'm not sure what to do with it.  I originally picked this book up as a staff recommendation from The Novel Neighbor bookstore in St. Louis.  I'm grateful to the staff member that put it on the recommendation shelf.  I'll be recommending it for a long while.