Sterling, Brittani

English

DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University

Georgia Library QuarterlyVolume 56Issue 3 Summer 2019 Article 167-1-2019Book Review - Jim Crow Terminals: TheDesegregation of America’s AirportsBrittani SterlingGeorgia State University, Alpharetta, bsterling@gsu.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/glqPart of the Library and Information Science CommonsThis Review is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in GeorgiaLibrary Quarterly by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. For more information, please contactdigitalcommons@kennesaw.edu.Recommended CitationSterling, B. (2019). Book Review - Jim Crow Terminals: The Desegregation of America’s Airports. Georgia Library Quarterly, 56(3).Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/glq/vol56/iss3/16  Jim Crow Terminals: The Desegregation of America’s Airports by Anke Ortlepp (The University of Georgia Press, 2016: ISBN 9781469628394, $26.00)  Air travel is associated with fun and luxury, and it is one of the safest and most easily accessible ways to cover long distances in a short period of time. Many could not imagine their lives without the convenience that aviation provides; however, this was not always the case for all Americans. In Jim Crow Terminals, Anke Ortlepp crafts a masterful narrative of how the transportation revolution in the post-WWII American South (1945–1965) pitted staunch municipal refusals to disrupt the social order of segregation against the deafening reluctance of the newly minted Federal Aviation Agency to take action toward ground facility matters. Until multiple fierce and long-suffering legal battles were underway in Southern airports, the ills of segregation continued their unjust existence, making the federal government an accomplice to discrimination. Victories such as the United States vs. The City of Montgomery and many other individual cases served as the predecessors of crucial legislation that eventually culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The text provides 60 pages of references to source documents, court case testimonies, archival photos, and government documents to substantiate this narrative. As America looked to its future, aviation emerged as one of its most essential industries, not just for transporting people and goods but for allowing commerce and growth to thrive in regions that had been largely agrarian. Airports were coming to the fore as the cosmopolitan, upwardly mobile way to open America to the world. With this period of growth and redefinition came a newly mobile middle class of African-American air travelers. Airports such as the well-traveled and much-heralded Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport were the sites of fly-ins, eat-ins, and other demonstrations that provided evidence for the cases that ultimately created desegregated airport environments. Although the history of other transportation industry integration efforts is well documented in the train, bus, and highway sectors, not much had been said about America’s airports. Ortlepp frames the hypocrisies of consumer culture, class distinction, and the boundaries to which American citizenry was tested in addressing racial discrimination in these spaces, as well as the trickery employed to keep local customs intact while blatantly violating federal rules.  Audiences for this book include the student who wants to draw parallels between today’s social justice struggles with those of the recent past, the history buff who wants to sharpen 1Sterling: Book Review - Jim Crow TerminalsPublished by DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University, 2019their understanding of one of the mid-20th century’s greatest revolutions, and the legal scholar who has an interest in how systematic and targeted litigation can change America’s social fabric for the better. Those interested in regional history or underrepresented features of the Civil Rights era will also find this book fascinating, as it explores exactly how the foundations of metropolitan areas that many of us traverse today were laid.  Brittani Sterling is a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Georgia State University’s  Perimeter College 2Georgia Library Quarterly, Vol. 56, Iss. 3 [2019], Art. 16https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/glq/vol56/iss3/16

Book Review - Jim Crow Terminals: The Desegregation of America’s Airports

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Book Review - Jim Crow Terminals: The Desegregation of America’s Airports

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