travel

Can Virginia Preserve the Sites of "Green Book" Travel from the Jim Crow Era?

A new law in Virginia would declare the sites promoted as safe and welcoming for Black travelers in a widely-circulated travel guide from the segregation era to be historic and worthy of protection against development. 

Professor Discusses the Hidden History of Passports

Patrick Bixby's work examines the cultural history of the passport and how documents secure the freedom to travel. 

A Look Back at the 747 as Boeing Delivers Last Jumbo Jet

Company historian Mike Lombardi says Boeing's giant jetliner "gave wings to the world." 

No Time Like the Present for a Visit to Kyiv

by Andreas Umland

As the situation in Western and Central Ukraine has for now stabilized, a trip to Kyiv can provide those interested in international affairs with a unique opportunity to observe world history in the making.

Why Breezewood, PA is the Most American Place on Earth

by Ed Simon

"This damned half-mile stretch of gas-stations, motels, fast food restaurants, and tchotchke shops exists on purpose."

It's Time for a Timeline of the History of Black Tourism

by Alana Dillettee and Stefanie Benjamin

Two professors of hospitality and tourism management argue that understanding Black travel history is necessary for making tourism open and inclusive today. 

A Guide to Touring Alabama's Civil Rights Trail

Two AJC reporters offer a guide to those interested in marking Black History Month with a tour of Alabama's major civil rights sites, memorials and museums. 

A Civil Rights Tour of America

Writer Garrett Martin identifies the key sites on a tour of civil rights history institutions in Atlanta, Alabama, Memphis and Washington. 

Traveling Black: Mia Bay Joins the Washington History Seminar, September 20

Mia Bay's new book "places the right to unrestricted mobility at the center of the twentieth-century black freedom struggle." She addresses the Washington History Seminar on Monday, September 20 at 4:00 EDT. 

A Look Inside the Green Book, Which Guided Black Travelers Through a Segregated and Hostile America

UCLA historian Scot Brown calls the "Green Book" a "Black GPS" for the Jim Crow era in an overview of the publication that helped African Americans exercise the freedom to travel. 

The Nobility of Mobility: A Road Trip Through Racism

Historian Chris West notes that “driving in a racist society” persists as a “gut-wrenching horror" in a new PBS documentary "Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America."

PBS Will Air "Driving While Black" Documentary on October 13

PBS will air a historical documentary examining the issue of mobility and freedom to travel as aspects of American racism.

The Three Daring Women Who Traversed the Himalayas

by Kayte Nunn

Antonia Deacock, Anne Davies, Eve Sims set off overland from England to Tibet in 1958, a 16,000 mile journey to aim climb one of the Himalayas’ unexplored high peaks. 

Why historians are fighting to save Thomas Cook’s enormous archive

by Stephanie Decker

With this 178-year-old firm, its heritage is about to be lost and a number of business historians – myself included – are fighting to save it.

Thomas Cook, the travel agency of Britain’s far-flung 19th-century empire, is dead

Thomas Cook was born with a railway journey that took place in 1841—the same year that Hong Kong was ceded to Britain, then at the peak of its imperial power.

Netflix ‘Chinese Game of Thrones’ charts the life of Marco Polo – so who was he?

by George Lane

It is a name that most will have heard of, but few, perhaps, actually know much about.

Timbuktu: ancient seat of Islamic learning

SEVARE, Mali — Timbuktu, the fabled desert city where retreating Muslim extremists destroyed ancient manuscripts, was a center of Islamic learning hundreds of years before Columbus landed in the Americas.It is not known how many of the priceless documents were destroyed by al Qaida-linked fighters who set ablaze a state-of-the-art library built with South African funding to conserve the brittle, camel-hide bound manuscripts from the harshness of the Sahara Desert climate and preserve them so researchers can study them.News of the destruction came Monday from the mayor of Timbuktu. With its Islamic treasures and centuries-old mud-walled buildings including an iconic mosque, Timbuktu is a U.N.-designated World Heritage Site....

Saving old Rangoon

AS WE SIT IN YANGON peak-hour traffic, Thant Myint-U is conjuring a golden age. The eminent Burmese historian, academic and former United Nations official has devoted much of the last two years to saving the city's spectacular architecture. Despite the gridlock as we slowly nudge through its colonial heart, we couldn't be better placed to recall the glories of old Rangoon (as Yangon was once known). It's difficult to remember today, thanks to nearly five decades of Myanmar's political isolation under brutal military rule, but there was a time when it was one of the jewels of the British Empire.