Soren’s ‘Driving While Black’
Airs Tonight At 9 On WSKG
COOPERSTOWN – “Driving While Black: Race, Space & Mobility,” based on the book by Gretchen Sorin, Cooperstown Graduate Program director, will be broadcast at 9 p.m. this evening on WSKG-TV. It is also available on the PBS streaming service.
The documentary, directed by Ken Burns’ brother Ric, is based on Sorin’s “Driving While Black: African American Travel & the Road to Civil Rights,” published in 2020. The book grew out of her 2009 thesis.
Sorin is also a New York State Parks commissioner and a member of the New York State Regents advisory board. She has served as guest curator for many exhibitions and is a fellow of the New York State Academy of Historians and president of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums.
I just watched this program. I was angered, sickened, & reminded of things I remembered happening to me in 1960s in Raleigh NC. I want a copy to us in my talks. I am not Black but I was raised by parents who participated in the various movements of the times & I also was involved is various parts. It is a part of my life that I am glad to have been part of.
I highly recommend this book, having purchased it several months ago. It was during my employment at Fenimore Museum in Cooperstown in 2003 that I first met Dr. Sorin. As a school-age child in Atlanta GA, and as a young person who traveled by car with my Dad from NY to GA when he worked for the Pentagon’s War Department, I still have vivid recollections of the ever-present racism and discrimination, and, even as a child, I can recall thinking how I might feel if I’d been born as a black person. Kudos to Dr. Sorin for having shared her insights into this racist undercurrent–still evident in our country today, I’m sad to say!
Excellent book. Should be a “must read” for all.