Negro Employment in Land and Air Transport

Negro Employment in Land and Air Transport
Author: Herbert R. Northrup
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 688
Release: 2018-01-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 151282111X

The authors examine both past and current practices and policies influencing black employment in the railroad, airline, trucking, and urban transit industries. Technological unemployment, declining traffic, and discrimination by unions, carriers, and government agencies have reduced both the number and proportion of blacks in the railroad industry, which was once one of the nation's leading employers of blacks. These, same railroading mores have affected black employment in airlines and urban transit in the past but today other forces are working to improve black representation in the former and leading to a heavily black work force in the latter. In the trucking industry, the Teamsters' Union and government policy are keys to Negro employment, with the union dragging its feet in supporting an increased number of black over-the-road drivers. A final section compares the situations in the four industries and forecasts future Negro employment trends in light of the most recent employment data, occupational needs, governmental policy, and other significant factors.

Empire in the Air

Empire in the Air
Author: Chandra D. Bhimull
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2017-12-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1479843474

Honorable Mention, 2019 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, given by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology Honorable Mention, 2019 Sharon Stephens Prize, given by the American Ethnological Society Examines the role that race played in the inception of the airline industry Empire in the Air is at once a history of aviation, and an examination of how air travel changed lives along the transatlantic corridor of the African diaspora. Focusing on Britain and its Caribbean colonies, Chandra Bhimull reveals how the black West Indies shaped the development of British Airways. Bhimull offers a unique analysis of early airline travel, illuminating the links among empire, aviation and diaspora, and in doing so provides insights into how racially oppressed people experienced air travel. The emergence of artificial flight revolutionized the movement of people and power, and Bhimull makes the connection between airplanes and the other vessels that have helped make and maintain the African diaspora: the slave ships of the Middle Passage, the tracks of the Underground Railroad, and Marcus Garvey’s black-owned ocean liner. As a new technology, airline travel retained the racialist ideas and practices that were embedded in British imperialism, and these ideas shaped every aspect of how commercial aviation developed, from how airline routes were set, to who could travel easily and who could not. The author concludes with a look at airline travel today, suggesting that racism is still enmeshed in the banalities of contemporary flight.

Loving's Love

Loving's Love
Author: Neal V. Loving
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2023-02-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 158834746X

The uplifting autobiography of a remarkable aviator who was the first African American and first double amputee licensed as a racing pilot In 1926, a young Neal Loving saw a de Havilland DH-4 biplane that propelled his dreams of taking to the sky. Loving’s Love is the inspiring autobiography about his journey to get there. Only a recent high school graduate when he built his first full-size flying machine at a time when most flying schools, airports, and aviation jobs excluded African Americans, Loving went on to design and fly five aircraft, open an aviation school, and become the first African American to be licensed as a racing pilot. Loving faced no small number of obstacles. Barred by racist gatekeeping from serving in the Civil Air Patrol during World War II, Loving and a friend created an all-Black squadron to serve their country. And despite undergoing a double leg amputation after a glider crash, Loving shares his story with unflinching optimism. He got fitted with wooden prosthetic legs and was back to flying just two years after his accident. The book offers readers an intimate and engaging look at Loving's career, with a focus on his WR-1 Loving’s Love, a single seat, midget racer he built in 1950 that won him the 1954 Most Outstanding Design award from the Experimental Aircraft Association. At 40 years old, Loving enrolled as an aeronautical engineering student and after graduating spent the next 20 years as a civilian specialist for the Air Force. After retiring, he continued flying for almost a decade. Neal Loving experienced a lifetime of thrills and challenges, and Loving’s Love captures the candid life story of a courageous man who defied the odds again and again.

Cabin Pressure

Cabin Pressure
Author: Louwanda Evans
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2013-08-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1442221364

From African American pilots being asked to carry people’s luggage to patrons refusing drinks from African American flight attendants, Cabin Pressure demonstrates that racism is still very much alive in the “friendly skies.” Author Louwanda Evans draws on provocative interviews with African Americans in the flight industry to examine the emotional labor involved in a business that offers occupational prestige, but also a history of the systemic exclusion of people of color.