Hosted by the The Mark Twain House & Museum

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Acclaimed historian Gretchen Sorin in conversation with Kimberly Kersey, the executive director of The Amistad Center for Art & Culture, discuss Sorin’s book Driving While Black. Driving While Black reminds us, the Civil Rights Movement was just that—a movement of black people and their allies in defiance of local law and custom. At the same time, Sorin shows that the car, despite the freedoms it offered, brought black people up against new challenges, from segregated ambulance services to unwarranted traffic stops, and the racist violence that too often followed. Interwoven with Sorin’s own family history and enhanced by dozens of little known images, Driving While Black charts how the automobile fundamentally reshaped African American life, and opens up an entirely new view onto one of the most important issues of our time.