It’s been more than 50 years since Jim Crow laws were outlawed in this country. But that doesn’t necessarily mean all’s well on the road to racial justice. Echoes of times past reverberate, if not on the interstates, perhaps on the ‘blue routes,’ the smaller highways and bi ways off the beaten path.
A sociologist from Virginia Tech decided to test drive the theory that discrimination against black people, is really a thing of the past.
Anthony Kwame Harrison took a page from the “Green Book,” the Jim Crow era guide for safe places for black drivers to stop on their journeys back in those days. Even before he conceived of this project, “I would notice traveling. not so much in Montgomery County in Blacksburg because, I think with it being a college town, it's a little bit of a bubble. But when I would go to other spaces, I would notice things, I would notice rebel flags. I would just notice a certain thing, that at least I took as sign: It may be these people don't really like my kind of people here."
Harrison, who is the Edward S. Diggs Professor in Humanities and the Gloria D. Smith Professor of Africana Studies at Virginia Tech, designed a research project to see for himself, what it’s like in this century, for a lone, black man, driving from Virginia to Pennsylvania, through mostly white towns. “I want to offer this as thinking about both, to what extent is this danger imagined and to what extent do we think about it and make it something that in our minds, limits what people feel that they're able to do or where people feel that limits what people feel that they're able to do or where people feel that they are able to travel.”
Harris is also a hip-hop artist, and a refrain had been running around in his head for almost a decade; the whole idea of “Driving While Black” in a white dominated world. He says, driving, listening to music, “you get a rhythm in your head. And then these lyrics started to come into my mind about, okay, I was trying to get out of Kentucky when I made a mistake. That's the first line. And turned into the song. And when I thought, what should I call this song? I called the song White Reign.” So he recorded the song and it came something of a theme for the research project.
There is a myriad of ideas, possible interpretations of White Reign. “I guess it connects with the rain, a reign of terror and it's really this kind of terror that surrounds, (people of color) whether imagined or real. And I think I'm trying to play with that space in between. The terror that surrounds travel and moving through unfamiliar spaces--maybe not for white people now, who may not even have to think about, ‘OK, where am I moving and going in a small town and how am I going to be looked at in this space? So I like to raise that awareness in people, particularly around the rise of the Alt Right and the political climate in this country.”
Harrison drove from Blacksburg, Virginia to Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, the childhood home of James ‘Billboard’ Jackson, the man he says is the real force behind creating the Greenbook. Jackson was a writer and producer, who paved the way for black artists to travel safely in the south. According to a publication called, “Dysfunction” In 1927 “Billboard” Jackson established the United States Department of Commerce’s Division of Negro Affairs under then-Secretary of Commerce and future United States President, Herbert Hoover. Described as “one of the most important federal appointments for the Negro which has been made since Emancipation,” Jackson’s duties included working with local Black merchants, compiling information about Black businesses for the Commerce Department’s files, and promoting its services and successes in a number of venues. Jackson had previously worked for sixteen years as a U.S. Railroad Service traveling investigator and was one of only two Black ranking officers in the U.S. Military Intelligence Bureau during World War Two.”
A new art exhibit on Harrison’s travels is now showing at the Armory Gallery at Virginia Tech. Gallery Director, Deb Sim, co-curated it with him. “There are photographs and paintings, excerpts from Harrison’s journals a kind of road map of his travels portraying the ideas in almost physical form. And having that visual connection makes people move through the space. That's my big thing, I like to make people move through the space. So, it literally is the journey. So, if you look there, that's Turner street, ( in Blacksburg, where Harrison kicked off his road trip) “…the Turner Street McDonald's, and he's referencing like he's in the McDonald's and then over there – (she points to the end of the collage on the wall ) he's made it to Belafonte and there's this little map that he drew in his journals.”
The exhibit includes original paintings by Virginia artist, Asa Jackson; a short film co-produced with Virginia Tech Advanced Instructor of Cinema Studies, Karl Precoda; photographs by Pamplin College of Business alumni (Virginia Tech Class of 2019), Richard Randolph; and an episode of travel authored by Assistant Professor of Sociology at Morgan State University (and Virginia Tech 2019 PhD), Corey Miles.
In this current climate of Red or Blue, Black or White, the story remains to be written. Is Jim Crow really gone? Was Harrison ever in any real danger? “Okay, well the story of my experience with people were remarkably nice and I actually think that's an important message to think about.” says Harrison. And this isn't to discount that there are bad people out there and this can be a dangerous time to travel as a visible minority. It's not to discount that, but the vast majority of people, and I think the vast majority of rural people, I think the vast majority of people in this part of the country have integrity. They're kind of people --- we may think differently politically about things, but they're not the demons and monsters, that sometimes, if you're on one side of a political divide, you'd make someone else out to be.
