‘DRIVING WHILE BLACK’ HEADLINED
Gretchen Sorin In Line
For National Recognition
COOPERSTOWN – SUNY Oneonta Distinguished Professor Gretchen Sullivan Sorin is a finalist for a 2021 NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work – Non-Fiction for her book “Driving While Black” (W. W. Norton & Company). The 52nd NAACP Image Awards ceremony will air live on BET March 27 at 8 p.m.
“I am tremendously honored and very grateful,” said Sorin, director of the Cooperstown Graduate School in Museum Studies. “I hope that this book in some small way helps to shine a light on the origins of restricted mobility for Black Americans and their relationship with law enforcement and serves as a call to action that will help to end racial profiling.”
“Driving While Black” demonstrates that the car—the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility—has always held particular importance for African Americans, allowing Black families to evade the dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road, the book concludes.
Dr. Sorin is in good company as a finalist for a 2021 NAACP Image Award. This year’s nominees for the Outstanding Literary Work – Non-Fiction category include “A Promised Land” by Barack Obama (Crown); “A Black Women’s History of the United States,” by Daina Ramey Berry & Kali Nicole Gross (Beacon Press); “Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America,” by Michael Eric Dyson; and “We’re Better Than This,” by Elijah Cummings (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers) Nominees were announced earlier this month.
The NAACP’s Outstanding Literary Work – Non-Fiction award has been given out since 2007, and previous winners include Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Margaret Lee Shutterly, Bryan Stephenson and Barack Obama.
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