Driving While Black by Gretchen Sorin

Author:Gretchen Sorin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2019-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Between the 1930s and the 1960s, a wide variety of African American travel guides sprang up to address the needs of different black audiences. (Collection of the author.)

Interspersed throughout the booklet’s commentary on hotel and overnight accommodations were listings for businesses that a traveling performer might need, including drugstores, lawyers, music schools, dry cleaners, and even dentists (for emergency dental work). Unfortunately, while the agents for Travelguide located some “mainstream” or “white” hotels, motels, and restaurants that did not discriminate against people of color, most of the listings were for the same African American boardinghouses and hotels found in other travel guides. Even though Butler imagined his publication of Travelguide as a form of gentle civil rights activism, the country was not yet ready for his enlightened approach.

Travelguide used an unusual method in its attempt to achieve these broader social goals. At Butler’s direction, black couples visited various resorts with the intention of demonstrating, through their supposedly sophisticated middle-class demeanor, their worthiness to be granted full access to the accommodations. Thus, rather than file lawsuits or create scandals in the local newspapers, Butler charged his emissaries with cajoling and convincing hotelkeepers to accept black travelers through gentle persuasion.45 Then, as the civil rights movement progressed, an additional impetus for change emerged to support Butler’s mission. An increasing number of white liberals intentionally chose to stay only at hotels that did not discriminate.46 White vacationers adding their leisure dollars to those of black travelers only aided Travelguide’s campaign to open doors to public accommodations.

Seeking to broaden their mission, the editors of Travelguide began to include profiles of prominent and inspiring black Americans. The 1947 edition featured, among others, baseball player Jackie Robinson, described as a modest and clean-cut former US Army lieutenant, and Philippa Duke Schuyler, the child musical prodigy. The biracial Schuyler represented the ultimate triumph of integration—her parents were African American journalist George Schuyler and Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, the daughter of a white Texas rancher. Philosophically, Schuyler’s biracial pedigree fit well into Travelguide’s integrationist and even internationalist world-view. A brilliant pianist who was hailed as the American Mozart, Philippa was seen by many as a superior human being, in that she combined the best qualities of both African Americans and white Americans. She provided the ideal counterargument to the popular notion that racial mixing would result in inferior humans and a diluted white race. Despite the well-meaning intentions of the Schuylers and those who agreed with them, however, this argument smacked of eugenics, even to integrationists, and sounded as racist as the attitudes of the southern bigots.47

Headquartered at New York’s United Nations Plaza, Travelguide sought not only to help establish equality for African Americans but also to bring together people from all over the world. The guide, whose symbol was, in fact, a globe, promoted international travel both to and from the United States, informed readers about publications by the United Nations, and listed consulates, visa offices, United Nations missions, and embassies in New York and Washington, DC. As

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