UMBC’s Library Gallery will present a new exhibition in September that reflects what it meant to experience leisure and travel as a Black American during the Jim Crow era.
“Picturing Mobility: Black Tourism and Leisure During the Jim Crow Era” is an exhibition curated by Elizabeth Patton and will be on view from Sept. 2, 2025 through Dec. 19, 2025 at UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery. Using photographs, oral histories, audio, video, and memorabilia, the exhibition will create an in-depth and multi-faceted narrative reflecting Black tourism and leisure in communities along the mid-Atlantic region from the 1920s to the 1960s.
More than personal memories, these artifacts demonstrate powerful resistance by Black people. Documenting and participating in leisure and mobility gives present-day viewers a glimpse of how Black people persisted to move freely and embrace joy, relaxation, and entertainment in a society determined to exclude and oppress them.
The intense racial segregation of the Jim Crow era, based on the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, helped keep the white supremacist mindset — which never recovered from the outlawing of slavery — in the mainstream. This made enjoying things like vacations, movies, restaurants, amusement parks, pools, and more not just difficult for Black Americans, but potentially life-threatening. Guidebooks like The Negro Travelers’ Green Book became essential for them to find safe and welcoming accommodations and relaxation spots…