Author Gretchen Sorin and Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Deputy Director of the The National Museum of African American History and Culture discuss Sorin’s new book and upcoming PBS documentary by Ric Burns, Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights.

Learn how the automobile fundamentally changed African American life. Through much of our country’s history, mobility has been limited for African Americans: first, by slavery; then, in the 20th Century, by the racism of some whites who denied their black countrymen the right to travel freely on trains and buses. Driving While Black reveals how the car—the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility—allowed black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society. Interweaving stories of her own family history, Gretchen Sorin opens up an entirely new view onto one of the most important issues of our time.