'Traveling While Black': Virtual reality exhibit at Civil
Rights Memorial Center will immerse audiences in Black experience on
the road
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Esther Schrader | Read the full piece here
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Friend,
As a young boy, Roger Ross Williams would travel with his mother, a
single woman who worked as a house cleaner in a small Pennsylvania
town, to visit relatives on their farm in Charleston, South Carolina.
"We would pack everything into the car, and we did it in one
shot. We never stopped. I never understood why," Williams, who
grew up to be an Academy Award-winning movie director, recalled in an
interview released by his film production company.
As an adult, Williams said, he realized why his mom drove 12 hours
without a break: "It's just the reality of being Black in
America."
That reality is the subject of a bold, genre-bending 3D film
experience directed by Williams that will be shown at the Southern
Poverty Law Center's Civil Rights Memorial Center
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in Montgomery, Alabama, starting Nov. 1 and running until Jan.
22, 2023. The project, "Traveling While Black,"
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uses high-concept documentary and virtual reality technology to
immerse participants into the terrifying world of the United States
during legal segregation.
Stepping into an exhibit space set up as a replica of the iconic,
Black-owned restaurant Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington, D.C.,
viewers will don Oculus Go headsets and, for 18 minutes, join
conversations with patrons depicted through virtual reality technology
who share their intimate experiences of traveling and living in the
U.S. when a simple bathroom stop could be life-threatening. The
virtual reality project portrays the era Williams, now 60, was born
into in 1962, when the set of laws and customs known as Jim Crow were
omnipresent across the American South, and when Black people faced
persistent racial prejudice, price-gouging and physical violence while
traveling throughout the U.S.
With Black travelers aware they went on the road at their peril, a
guide published from 1936 to 1966 became their lifeline to finding
establishments, like Ben's Chili Bowl, where they would be
welcomed rather than threatened or turned away. The guide, The
Negro Motorist Green Book, was the brainchild of a Harlem, New
York-based postal carrier, Victor Hugo Green, who had grown weary of
the discrimination Black people faced when they left their
neighborhoods. It provided a list of hotels, boarding houses, taverns,
restaurants, service stations and other establishments throughout the
country that served Black patrons. Traveling while Black required
ingenuity and courage, and establishments like Ben's -
with its famous half-smokes, chili dogs and milkshakes, and its role
at the heart of the vibrant area known as "Black Broadway"
- were safe spaces, respites from the reality of white
supremacy.
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READ MORE
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond,
working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy,
strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of
all people.
Friend, will you make a gift to help the SPLC fight for
justice and equity in courts and combat white supremacy?
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