Riding Jane Crow

American railroads of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were littered with racial, gendered traps. And from working in the food car to sitting in first class, Black women are critical to the history of the American railroad. Thaggert’s new book is Riding Jane Crow African American Women on the American Railroad.

While many European writers described the open road as a place of freedom, African-Americans revealed a different reality. From periodicals to fiction and nonfiction, Michael Hall says that travel experiences in black literature are raw data about challenges to Black people’s mobility in America. His new book is Freedom Beyond Confinement: Travel and Imagination in African-American Cultural History and Letters. 

All the historic records suggest that the South Hampton YWCA was chartered in 1911. But Michelle Ellis Young found out that that wasn’t true. In fact, that YMCA was chartered in 1908 by a little-known shero named Laura E. Titus.

In the 60s and 70s, hitchhiking became a popular trend across the U.S.. Richard Straw shares with us some of the songs that motivated and sustained these hitchhikers.