About this Event
Join Dr. Mia Bay, author and historian, to explore how the invention of the passenger car reshaped the experiences of Black travelers in the automotive age.
For many African Americans, cars were more than just a mode of transportation. They were a symbol of autonomy, providing an alternative to traveling in segregated railroad cars during the Jim Crow era. Still, car travel wasn’t a complete escape from racial discrimination. Rest stops, roadside accommodations, and gas stations grew increasingly segregated as car travel became common. Black customers were often refused service.
Discover how Black travelers navigated these challenges with resilience and ingenuity, mapping out careful travel routes, relying on networks of friends and safe havens, and carrying supplies to avoid unwelcoming establishments.
Mia's book Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance will be available for purchase at the event.
About Cuyahoga Valley Lyceum Series
This season the Cuyahoga Valley Lyceum Series is bringing experts on history as well as current trends to Cuyahoga Valley National Park to share in-depth and engaging stories and discoveries commemorating the park's 50th anniversary.
WHAT TO EXPECT
6:30 PM: Doors Open
7:00 PM: Presentation
8:00 PM: Event Ends
TICKETS
Two ways to participate, in person or via a live stream.
Conservancy Members: $10 | General Admission: $15
Students/Teachers: Free (limited tickets available)
Live Stream Participation: Free
About Mia Bay
Mia Bay is the Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of American History at University of Pennsylvania. She is a scholar of American and African American intellectual, cultural and social history whose recent interests include black women’s thought, African American approaches to citizenship, and the history of race and transportation. She holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. from Yale University and a B.A. from the University of Toronto. Bay’s is the author of Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance (Harvard University Press, 2021), which received a 2022 PROSE Award for Excellence in American History, and is a finalist for the Los Angeles Time Book Award. Her other books include The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925 (Oxford University Press, 2000); To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) and the edited work Ida B Wells, The Light of Truth: The Writings of An Anti-Lynching Crusader (Penguin Books, 2014); as well as a number of articles and book chapters. She is also the co-author, with Waldo Martin and Deborah Gray White, of the textbook Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans with Documents (Bedford/St. Martins 2012, 1st Edition, 2016, 2nd Edition, 2020, 3rd Edition), and the editor of two collections of essays: Towards an Intellectual History of Black Women (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), which she co-edited with Farah Jasmin Griffin, Martha S. Jones and Barbara Savage, and Race and Retail: Consumption Across the Color Line (Rutgers University Press, 2015), which she co-edited with Ann Fabian.
Bay’s work has been supported by the Fletcher Foundation, the National Humanities Center, Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello; the American Council of Learned Societies, Boston University’s Institute on Race and Social Division Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center and W.E.B. Du Bois Centers; and American Historical Association. An Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, Bay is a member of the executive board of the Society of American Historians and serves on the editorial boards of Reviews in American History, the Journal of African American History, Modern Intellectual History and the African American Intellectual History Society’s Black Perspectives Blog.
Bay is also a frequent consultant on museum and documentary film projects. Her recent public history work includes working with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) on one of its inaugural exhibits-- “Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom: The Era of Segregation 1876-1968”-- and serving a scholarly advisor to the Library of Congress and NMAAHC’s Civil Rights History Project.
Bay is currently completing a new book on the history of African American ideas about Thomas Jefferson.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Happy Days Lodge, 500 West Streetsboro Street, Peninsula, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 15.00
