Taking Liberties: Street Fights and Streetcars in Jim Crow New York

Why were streetcars the focus of such frequent and fraught attempts to police the color line in the Jim Crow North and why were Black women the drivers of this extraordinary campaign for civil rights? Dr. Richard Bell, Professor of History at University of Maryland, College Park seeks to answer these questions by examining the nexus of gender, technology, mobility, confinement, and racism at play in these charged encounters.