Why read Colored Travelers?

Book cover of Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship Before the Civil War

Book description

Americans have long regarded the freedom of travel a central tenet of citizenship. Yet, in the United States, freedom of movement has historically been a right reserved for whites. In this book, Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor shows that African Americans fought obstructions to their mobility over 100 years before Rosa Parks…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Colored Travelers as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Christina Proenza-Coles

Author

Rosa Parks is an essential icon of the Civil Rights Movement, but the history of Black women and men turning segregation and discrimination during travel into a platform to negotiate the rights of citizenship has a long arc. Pryor gives us the longer backstory to the 20th-century Civil Rights Movement and 21st-century movement for Black lives when she traces how 19th-century Black men and women traveling in stage coaches, rail cars, and steam ships were often on the front lines of the struggle for Americans’ equal protection under the law.

From Christina's list on The best books on how African Americans shaped democracy in America.