The United States’ first affordable and widely used form of public transportation, streetcars, which began as horsedrawn cars mounted on rails, had a far more revolutionary impact on American life than is widely recognized today. Introduced during decades in which the United States was transitioning from slavery to segregation, streetcars were sites of clashes between blacks and whites. This talk discusses the daily racial conflicts that took place on streetcars as a way of better understanding the role of spatial boundaries, status anxieties and violence in establishing and maintaining Jim Crow.
Mia Bay is the Paul A. Mellon Professor of American History in the University of Cambridge and president of the Collegium of African American Research (CAAR). She is a scholar of American and African American intellectual, cultural and social history whose interests include black women’s thought, African American approaches to citizenship, and the history of race and transportation.
This talk is part of this year’s Annual Conference of the Historians of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGfA) held at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
In cooperation with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerika-Studien and the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut at Freie Universität Berlin.
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
Wilhelm-von-Humboldt-Saal
Unter den Linden 8
10117 Berlin
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