Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights”

Speaker: Gretchen Sorin, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program

EBWA is honored to host author, scholar and acclaimed historian Gretchen Sorin. She will discuss her fascinating new book, Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights, now the basis of a major PBS documentary by Ric Burns, which will be aired on PBS October 13 at 9 PM.  In this well researched and readable book, Sorin reveals how the automobile opened up a whole new world for black motorists, who relied on travel guides, black-only businesses, and informal networks to avoid the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society. Sorin relates in her book her own family’s experiences traveling from the North to the South for annual family visits and all the obstacles that they had to overcome to make a safe journey.

Gretchen Sorin is Distinguished Professor and Director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program of the State University of New York. She has curated innumerable exhibits including with the Smithsonian, the Jewish Museum, and the New York State Historical Association. She lives in upstate New York. All women are welcome to join us on Zoom and engage with this timely topic.

Since our programs this year will be offered only virtually, to receive an invitation to join the program on Zoom, please email Gabrielle Reals at ellegr3@gmail.com by Monday, October 26. If you have never used Zoom before, this tutorial created by the Treasure Coast Unitarian Universalist Church in Stuart, FL will tell you how to do it:  Zoom Tutorial from TCUUC. After you download a free Zoom account, if you need help, contact Judy Clough at mimaclough@yahoo.com. Best to do this well before the October 29 meeting. Please note: If you have already requested that Judy send you a Zoom invite, you do not need to contact Gabrielle for the upcoming program.

Sign into the meeting between 6:50 and 7:00 PM. After welcoming remarks, the speaker will be introduced at 7:15. Following the presentation, there will be time for questions. Networking (when each woman may share something of interest with the group) will begin around 8:15, and the meeting will end no later than 9 PM.

To see the complete calendar of EBWA programs for 2020-2021, please click HERE.