This is the American dream of freedom on wheels.

This is the American dream of freedom on wheels.

An automotive age traveling on time-saving super highways.

The 1940s, 50s, and 60s were the golden age of road travel.

Cars had become cheap and roomy enough to carry families comfortably for hundreds of miles.

The interstate highway system had started to connect the country's smaller roads into a vast nationwide network.

Finally tourists could make their way from New York to California,

with the windows down and the wind in their hair,

seeing the grandeur of America along the way.

We have become the nation on wheels,

with more motorized mobility than ever dreamed of before.

But of course, this freedom and mobility wasn't available to everyone.

That's our brand new producer and splash of cold water, Delaney Hall.

Because in 1956, the year that federal funding made the interstate highway system possible,

Jim Crow was still the law of the land.

In the South, racial segregation was enforced by law

and had been since shortly after reconstruction.

In many parts of the North, the codes were enforced in practice and these codes could make a simple road trip really complicated for black travelers.

How is this? Is that a good level? Is all you picking me up well there? This is Curtis Graves? Okay my name is Curtis Graves and I was born in 1938, so I'm a little older than most of the people who are listening to this.

Curtis would eventually become a Texas State Representative, and then he'd go on to work at NASA and then he'd become a

photographer but as a kid he grew up in the segregated South and for many years his parents

tried to shield him from that reality.

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