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This year’s C.G. Gordon Moss Lecture, organized by the Moton Museum, will feature the Organization of American Historians (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer, Dr. Mia Bay. She is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. That will take place on April 5, at 6:30 p.m. inside Longwood’s Radcliff Hall.

Bay will discuss her book Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance. Traveling Black tells the history of the African American experience on segregated transportation from the antebellum era to the present day. Dr. Bay explores what it was like to travel in Jim Crow cars, ride at the back of the bus, and navigate a myriad of discriminatory travel accommodations — from whites-only service stations to segregated airline terminals. It underscores that blacks bitterly resented these humiliations and resisted them fiercely, recovering an intertwined history of travel segregation and black struggles for freedom of movement.

Who was Moss?

C.G. Gordon Moss was a professor of history at Longwood College from 1944-69. He served as department chair from 1947-60 and dean of the faculty from 1960-64. During the school closings in Prince Edward County from 1959-64, Moss became an outspoken advocate of reopening the schools and of equality and justice for all Americans. The C.G. Gordon Moss Lecture features historians who study democracy, social justice and social activism in American history.

The annual C.G. Gordon Moss Lecture is sponsored by the Moton Museum, Longwood University’s Office of Academic Affairs, Greenwood Library, and Department of History, Political Science, and Philosophy. Admission is free and open to all.