Press Release:
Richmond Memorial Library will host an author and book talk on Saturday at 1 p.m. in the Reading Room. Dr. Miriam Thaggert will present her 2022 book, "Riding Jane Crow: African American Women on the American Railroad."
About the book: As Jim Crow laws became more prevalent and forced black Americans to "ride Jim Crow" on the rails, the train compartment became a contested space of leisure and work. Riding Jane Crow examines four instances of black female railroad travel: the travel narratives of black female intellectuals such as Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell; black middle-class women who sued to ride in first class and ladies’ cars and black women railroad food vendors; and black maids on Pullman trains.
Thaggert argues that the railroad represented a technological advancement that was entwined with African American attempts to secure social progress. Black women's experiences on or near the railroad illustrate how American technological progress has often meant their ejection or displacement; thus, it is the Black woman who most fully measures the success of American freedom and privilege, or "progress," through her travel experiences.
About the presenter: Professor Miriam Thaggert is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Buffalo. She is the author of "Riding Jane Crow and Images of Black Modernism: Verbal and Visual Strategies of the Harlem Renaissance." She also co-edited two volumes, A History of the Harlem Renaissance and African American Literature in Transition, 1920-30, both published by Cambridge University Press. For more information, visit miriamthaggert.com
Copies are available to borrow through the library and a limited number of copies will be for sale at the event. Richmond Memorial Library is located at 19 Ross St., Batavia. For more about the library, visit batavialibrary.org or call 585-343-9550.
Submitted Photo of Miriam Thaggert.
