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Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture) Hardcover – November 28, 2016

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 12 ratings
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Americans have long regarded the freedom of travel a central tenet of citizenship. Yet, in the United States, freedom of movement has historically been a right reserved for whites. In this book, Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor shows that African Americans fought obstructions to their mobility over 100 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. These were "colored travelers," activists who relied on steamships, stagecoaches, and railroads to expand their networks and to fight slavery and racism. They refused to ride in "Jim Crow" railroad cars, fought for the right to hold a U.S. passport (and citizenship), and during their transatlantic voyages, demonstrated their radical abolitionism. By focusing on the myriad strategies of black protest, including the assertions of gendered freedom and citizenship, this book tells the story of how the basic act of traveling emerged as a front line in the battle for African American equal rights before the Civil War.

Drawing on exhaustive research from U.S. and British newspapers, journals, narratives, and letters, as well as firsthand accounts of such figures as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and William Wells Brown, Pryor illustrates how, in the quest for citizenship, colored travelers constructed ideas about respectability and challenged racist ideologies that made black mobility a crime.
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  1. Part of series
    The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
  2. Print length
    240 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    The University of North Carolina Press
  5. Publication date
    November 28, 2016
  6. Dimensions
    6.12 x 1 x 9.25 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1469628570
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1469663920
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Contains an unprecedentedly rich trove of evidence about black people's experiences and understandings of travel before the Civil War.--New England Quarterly



Proves once again that there is absolutely no break in American history from before America's founding to the present day when it comes to Civil War and Civil Rights.--Salvatore Cilella, Civil War News



[A] seminal work. . . . An original contribution to historiography of the 19th century, this work will engage everyone from legal scholars to general readers, and is especially recommended to those interested in the antebellum era and African American history.--Library Journal, Starred Review



The book's strength is its comprehension of the civic component of these prolonged public travails. Highly recommended.--Choice



Offers meaningful insights and an original analysis regarding the precariousness of black movement—a topic relevant to Americans in the twenty-first century.--Journal of Southern History



Pryor argues persuasively that the abusive and discriminatory treatment meted out to African Americans in the "free" North was more about subordination than it was about blackness.--The Journal of American History



Colored Travelers adds to and pushes beyond a growing literature on the history of race and transportation. . . . While Colored Travelers addresses the links between race, mobility, equal rights, and citizenship, it also explores how transportation technologies were part of the longer development of racial practices that emphasize surveillance, criminalization, and the idea of home-grown foreigners.--Technology and Culture



Would be a welcome addition for students, scholars and readers of transport history.--The Journal of Transport History



Although there have been plenty of books and articles that have come out in the last ten years on racial segregation and public transportation as well as black activism in the antebellum North, at this moment there is nothing as original or thought provoking as Colored Travelers.--Griot



Pryor analyzes the experiences of free black people living in the antebellum North who had the resources to travel, and who protested against discrimination on public conveyances.--Journal of North Carolina Association of Historians

About the Author

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor is assistant professor of history at Smith College.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1469663929
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The University of North Carolina Press; Reprint edition (November 28, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1469628570
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1469663920
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.12 x 1 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
12 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Ilana
5.0 out of 5 stars I loved reading this book and found myself rationing it so ...
Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2017
Verified Purchase
Colored Travelers is a fully engaging and highly insightful work of scholarship. The use of primary source materials is deftly managed and handled in such an effective way that makes me wonder why I don't see it done more often. From the first chapter which sets the tone and pace and throughout each well defined and clear chapter, I loved reading this book and found myself rationing it so that it would not end too soon. The deep history lessons it provides are required reading for anyone trying to understand and overcome the racial divide in the U.S. today.
2 people found this helpful
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EmilieMarieBlake
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2016
Verified Purchase
Great book.
One person found this helpful
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Eric Hobart
5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable account of mobility in the Antebellum north
Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2022
Elizabeth Pryor has crafted a work that will help people understand how pervasive racism was in America before the Civil War - and not just in the South - by examining mobility and how people traveled about the world before the War.

Many of us have read of, or heard, the stories of restrictiveness in the American South, the slave codes, the passes issued just to go to a neighboring plantation, but I've not previously read this level of detail about how the people in the North treated the Black Americans that lived in their midst.

Pryor starts with an extensive chapter detailing the racism in the north - particularly the use of the "N" word. The chapter was extensively researched and well written, but it was equally horrifying to understand how pervasive this sentiment was and how it was just "accepted".

She then proceeds to discuss true physical mobility - on various modes of transport, such as carriages, trains, and ships. She deftly explains how the African American travelers were treated and why that was such a significant event - especially in the "liberated" North.

My favorite chapter was her analysis of Passports and how the government really restricted travel by those non-White citizens by expressly claiming, rather disingenuously, that these people were not citizens, which foreshadowed the 1857 Dred Scott decision in the US Supreme Court.

All told, this book is a fantastic work of scholarship and well worth reading for anyone that wants to better understand how Black Americans were treated - even north of the Mason-Dixon line - before the Civil War.
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Patrick Regan
5.0 out of 5 stars Colored Travelers is an engaging depiction of pre-Civil War life in America that will enlarge your understanding of these times
Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2017
Colored Travelers, a study of mobility of African Americans in the free north and abroad, is the kind of history book that makes the study of history interesting. While the author did extensive research for her book, as is shown by the almost 45 pages of notes and references herein, it is the way she presents the facts and events of this difficult time in American history that makes this a book worth reading. Drawing from newspaper accounts of those times, autobiographies of the people involved, journals and many other sources, the author weaves together a living history of these times. For example, in the depiction of Frederick Douglass’s difficult trip to England via steamship, the detailed account of the many people on the ship, White Americans, the English captain and crew and the African Americans, all jammed together in the close confines of a steamship, where emotions were likely to run high, and in fact did, makes for engaging reading. A common theme throughout this book is the stiff resistance African Americans put up against the prejudice that was rampant during these times. I went into this book having been taught that the free north was a haven for African Americans but came away with the realization that, in fact, life in the northern states was frequently quite difficult for African Americans. White Americans felt that their territory was being invaded and thus made every effort to curtail the mobility of African Americans. Chapter by chapter, the author depicts these efforts and the resistance that African Americans, and the white Abolitionists who supported them, put up against these efforts. I came away from this book quite impressed with the effort that they put into gaining mobility in the United States and abroad and I am sure you will too.
2 people found this helpful
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