Travel Editor Ella Ruddle explores the complex history of tourism and travel for Black people.
Cultural geographer Derek H. Alderman writes that the history of tourism for Black people is “one of negotiating, if not overcoming, a hostile social landscape” - skills which black travellers unfortunately find themselves continuing to exercise today. Travel has historically been used as an avenue to restrict Black people, but equally a way for Black people to exercise their freedom. It is vital to emphasise the restriction of Black travellers, but also portray their history as one of resistance.
In the United States, the Jim Crow Laws purposefully limited Black mobility. These segregation laws meant Black people were unable to ride in the same train coaches as white people under the guise of ‘separate but equal’. When the accessibility of motorcars increased, Black people across America boycotted railways in the hope they could travel freely in their vehicles. Yet Black drivers then faced segregation on the roads, and in petrol stations, and were unable to stop in certain towns on long haul drives (known as sundown towns).
Due to the near impossibility of long-haul drives, black travel guides were made. The original iteration of such guides was instigated by Edwin Henry Hackley, a black attorney and civil rights activist. This guide was a predecessor to the widely known ‘Green Book’ and provided Black drivers with African-American safe accommodation and places to eat and fill-up.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of ‘A Coloured Man’s Journey’, writes that “the ‘Green Book’ was the bible of every Negro highway traveller in the 1950s and early 1960s…you literally didn’t dare leave home without it.”
Due to these histories, Black travellers across the globe may opt to travel in groups as opposed to travelling alone, and avoid unknown places. Asha Hussein, a journalist for the Evening Standard, writes about her recent experiences of racism while travelling, and mentions how the rise of anti-immigration sentiments fuels this.
There remains a need for a Black travel movement. Seeing this gap, Evita Robinson created the Nomadness Travel Tribe in 2011. Starting as an informative Facebook group for Black travellers, Robinson has transformed Nomadness into a 30,000-strong collective of females. Referencing the ‘Green Book’, Robinson says it created “the framework for generations of Black American travellers after him.” Robinson now creates group trips so Black and brown travellers feel both empowered and safe to see the world - a modern-day Green Book.
In her Ted Talk “Reclaiming the Globe” Robinson says that there is a burden every Black American traveller holds; “…we are immediately either perpetuating or diffusing bias placed on us by negative media depictions.” Nomadness allows travellers to rewrite these stories. Robinson and her tribe are “showing the world that Black people do travel everywhere and we aren’t a monolithic people...”
While Robinson is a founding figure of the new Black Travel Movement, countless media outlets, companies and studies have contributed to this resistance. Another example is Travel Noire, a media outlet designed for travellers of the African Diaspora. Their website is filled with articles relating to Black experiences, but notably, they have an entire section on Ireland. They cover, like the Green Book, Black-owned businesses to visit, the history of Black people in Ireland, and why you should travel to Ireland during Black history month. The Black Travel Movement is a global movement;
The history of Black travel is one of restriction, but also one of continued resilience. Robinson describes it well, saying, “From generations, we have gone from literally being chained, to literally being able to fly, with quite a bit of turbulence in between.”