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Race, Mobility, and Fantasy: Afromobiling in Tropical Florida

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2016

HENRY KNIGHT LOZANO
HENRY KNIGHT LOZANO*
Affiliation:
X Department, Northumbria University. Email: [email protected].
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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.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 805 - 831
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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References

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