A Brief Review of "Driving While Black"

 

Hi folks -- Ed sent this to me and graciously allowed me to post it. I will post my own review in the near future, perhaps after our President's Day snow storm, assuming the forecast is correct.

John, the Driving While Back book nominated for Cugnot Award consideration is a truly fascinating piece of scholarship and much better than I thought it would be.  One of the things that struck me was a survey that was taken in 1950 among Black residents of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC -- to determine which brand of new car or used car was most popular with these folks.  In all four cities, even though it was a substantially more expensive car than a Ford or Chevy, Buicks were the most popular car and vehicles of choice.  In Pittsburgh nearly 20% of all new cars purchased by Blacks in 1950 were Buicks compared to 13% for Ford and 8% for Chevrolets.  The other cities in that survey were quite similar.  

And there is a whole section that speaks to Cadillac ownership among Black folks in the 1950s -- Blacks bought Cadillacs in the same proportion as Whites who bought Cadillacs even though, on the average, Black incomes were often half of what White incomes were.

Many Cadillac dealers would not sell to Blacks so lots of folks had a white friend buy a car for them and then later just transfer the title.

Reasons given: Black folks were willing to scrimp and save for a dependable and heavy car (which Buicks were considered to be).  Heavy and roomy because often families needed to travel long distances -- back home to the South to visit relatives -- and often couldn't find places to stay so they slept in their cars and dependable because their was the belief (often true) that they would be ripped off by white-owned service stations if they broke down.  

And later in the 1960s the first Black-owned dealerships were often Buick franchises.

Lots of interesting stuff on gasoline in this book.  What was the main choice of gas among Black folks in the 1940s and 1950s?  Esso.  Typically other brand gas stations, while willing to sell Blacks gasoline, wouldn't allow them to use the restrooms......but Esso and Standard Oil had a national policy that urged individual station owners to provide restroom access to all.  

Later the first Black-owned gas stations were Esso stations.