Traveling Black: Race and Resistance

On Thursday, February 3, author, historian and University of Pennsylvania professor Dr. Mia Bay will join LancasterHistory virtually for a lecture on her latest book, Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance.

After emancipation, Black Americans had the chance at free mobility in the United States. However, Black mobility was fraught with contradictory rules, intimidation, court cases, and segregated modes of transportation. Dr. Mia Bay will explore when, how, and why racial restrictions in transportation took shape in the United States and what it was like to live with them.

Mia Bay, Ph.D. is the Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of American History at the University Pennsylvania. Professor Bay 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 publications 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 many articles and book chapters. 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.

This event will take place online via Zoom on Thursday, February 3, 2021 at 7pm Eastern. This is NOT an in-person event.

The program is free and open to the public but requires advance registration. Register online by clicking “Get Tickets” below or by calling (717) 392-4633. Your link to the Zoom event will be emailed to you upon successful registration. If you are unfamiliar with Zoom, we highly recommend reading our Virtual Event Guide & FAQ in advance the of the event. Registration will close online on February 3 at 6:50pm ET.