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- Title
Race, Mobility, and Fantasy: Afromobiling in Tropical Florida.
- Authors
LOZANO, HENRY KNIGHT
- Abstract
This article explores a popular tourist vehicle in early twentieth-century Florida: the Afromobile. Beginning in the 1890s, Afromobiling referred to the white tourist experience in south Florida of travelling in a wheelchair propelled by an African American hotel employee. Most prominent in Palm Beach, these wheelchairs developed into a heavily promoted tourist activity in the region. Using promotional imagery and travel literature this paper traces the development of Afromobiling as a tourist vehicle that played upon south Florida's tropical environs. It argues that the vehicle's popularity related to its enactment of benign racial hierarchy and controlled black mobility. Moreover, the Afromobile infused US fantasies about south Florida as a tropical and "oriental" paradise for white leisure.
- Subjects
PALM Beach County (Fla.); FLORIDA; PEDICABS; TOURISM; HISTORY of tourism; 20TH century history of race relations in the United States; HISTORY; FLORIDA description &; travel
- Publication
Journal of American Studies, 2017, Vol 51, Issue 3, p805
- ISSN
0021-8758
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0021875816001018