Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America

• Fred Vigeant
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Fred Vigeant is WITF's Director of Programming and Promotions for TV and Radio. Fred manages the schedules for our radio and television platforms. He also analyzes audience research and manages the public affairs program Smart Talk. Previously, Fred was at WRVO in Oswego, NY for 12 years serving in various roles including Program Director and before that Operations Manager. Fred graduated from the State University of New York College at Oswego with a B.A. in Mass Communications and Broadcasting.

 Courtesy of H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

1960s SIDE VIEW OUTDOOR SMILING AFRICAN AMERICAN FAMILY FATHER MOTHER TWO SONS SITTING IN FOUR DOOR SEDAN AUTOMOBILE (Photo by H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images)

Chronicling the riveting history and personal experiences – at once liberating and challenging, harrowing and inspiring, deeply revealing and profoundly transforming – of African Americans on the road from the advent of the automobile through the seismic changes of the 1960s and beyond – Driving While Black explores the deep background of a recent phrase rooted in realities that have been an indelible part of the African American experience for hundreds of years – told in large part through the stories of the men, women and children who lived through it.

Drawing on a wealth of recent scholarship – and based on and inspired in large part by Gretchen Sorin’s recently published study of the way the automobile and highways transformed African American life across the 20th century (Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights (W.W. Norton, 2020) – the film examines the history of African Americans on the road from the depths of the Depression to the height of the Civil Rights movement and beyond, exploring along the way the deeply embedded dynamics of race, space and mobility in America during one of the most turbulent and transformative periods in American history.

Watch Driving While Black on WITF Tuesday October 13 at 9:00pm.  You can stream the program at its scheduled time through WITF’s live webstream on our website and through the PBS Video app on most smart phone and smart TV platforms. The program is also available on-demand through the PBS Video app.

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