A Salute to Black History

Before 1920, there was little black ownership of automobiles. But in the 1930’s, auto dealers began to advertise in black newspapers in an attempt to reach “our colored farmer friends.” The introduction of buying a car on credit helped expand ownership, including to blacks.

The private automobile offered to its owner a previously unachievable level of mobility and personal freedom. And for black people in the Jim Crow South, it offered something else: freedom from the daily humiliation of riding public transportation. Waiting rooms and on-board seating were strictly segregated for trains, trolleys and buses. And facilities for blacks were commonly inferior to those reserved for whites. A black rider who boarded a bus at the front and paid the (always white) driver the fare might be required to exit the vehicle and re-enter at the rear, where the “negro section” was located. And when seated near the dividing line between the races, a black rider might be summarily ordered to move to a different seat in deference to a white rider.

The private automobile allowed an escape from that humiliating world, so blacks found in cars a dignity that transcended a simple desire for mobility. And when they made their choice of an automobile to purchase, they often reflected another facet of the Jim Crow world they lived in: the inconvenience and danger black people routinely faced on the road. They tended to buy larger, sturdier cars that enjoyed a reputation for high reliability. Many whites saw blacks buying a large car as a simple desire to show off, or to announce that they were as good as any white motorist. The caricature of a black man driving a Cadillac became just one more Jim Crow era stereotype used to ridicule blacks as vain and infantile. But in fact, there was a quite different psychology behind a black motorist purchasing a bigger, better car. When blacks traveled the roads, there was no guarantee they would find a restaurant that would serve them; a gas station that would let them fill the tank, much less use the rest room; or a hotel at which to pass the night. A bigger car let them carry more supplies, such as picnic hampers, a portable potty, and a reserve can of gasoline. A large back seat could serve as a resting place over a hotel-less night. And quality mattered because being stranded on the road with a mechanical problem – with the local white mechanic unwilling to work on a black man’s car – might well put them in a dangerous situation. This was an era of significant Klan activity, of lynching’s for the slightest perceived provocation, and of “sundown towns” that proudly posted highway billboards saying, “Nigger, don’t let the sun set on you here.” Buicks in particular were valued for high reliability that might take the black motorist on down the road from such evils.

Black motorists were vigilant for threatening situations, knowing full well that in the event of violence, local authorities often would  be of little help. Henry Shepherd spoke of traveling North Carolina roads in the 1950s and 60s:

You didn’t want to get somebody throwing something out the car window and they hit you upside the head with a beer bottle or a brick… If you reported it to the police, they he would say, ‘Ah, they’re just having a little fun.’… You have to maneuver these things because you don’t have the same rights as everybody else.

But even when black motorists could avoid physical violence, there was the constant specter of humiliation. Sidney Jones, Jr. related the story of traveling by car with his family in the 1960s. In need of gas, they stopped at a filling station that was willing to take their money but not to grant his father a shred of dignity in front of his family:

We had just come through Virginia… We stopped at a gas station. I think I was probably only nine or ten. The boy who came out to wait on us, he was about the same age. My father, he got outside the car, and he was telling him what he wanted. And the little boy said, ‘Is that all you need, boy?’

Civil rights icon John Lewis recalled how his family prepared for an automobile trip in 1951:

There would be no restaurant for us to stop at until we were well out of the South, so we took our restaurant right in the car with us…. Stopping for gas and to use the bathroom took careful planning. Uncle Otis had made this trip before, and he knew which places along the way offered “colored” bathrooms and which were better just to pass on by. Our map was marked, and our route was planned that way, by the distances between service stations where it would be safe for us to stop.

Beginning in 1938, the Green Book included businesses in North Carolina, with information on eight cities: Fayetteville, Gastonia, Greensboro, New Bern, Raleigh, Sanford, Winston-Salem, and Weldon.

Among the North Carolina businesses listed in the Green Book were respected hotels in Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro and New Bern.

The North Carolina Transportation Museum is pleased to announce an update to the “How the West Was Won” exhibit, located in the Bob Julian Roundhouse.

Focusing on the story of Black Mountain, N.C. resident and longtime Southern Railway employee George Winslow Whittington, “The Life of a Brakeman” explains how the difficult job of brakeman changed from the era of steam to diesel locomotives. Discover the story of George Winslow Whittington, who rode the rails of Southern Railways’ Asheville Division as brakeman from 1926 to his retirement from that same role in 1963. Whittington exemplified the strong and courageous brakemen who faced many challenges so that trains could arrive to their destinations safely, a job made even more difficult by Whittington’s status as a Black man during segregation.

“The Life of a Brakeman” was created with the content curation aid of Regina Lynch-Hudson, the granddaughter of George Winslow Whittington, and contributions by his son Les Whittington, as well as other descendants.