Letter from Thomas Cook

Letter from Thomas Cook

Many academic and personal accounts of African Americans travelling to Europe in the interwar years, either through wartime deployment in France or after, reflected on the relative respite Europe offered from the racial divisions that were strictly enforced in the United States. Whilst this was undoubtedly true, travel – like so many aspects of public life – continued to be racially segregated (literally or otherwise) and unequal. This letter from the travel company Thomas Cook and Son to WEB Du Bois, written when the latter was organising the Second Pan-African Congress in Europe in 1921, notes that, on account of race, accommodation at the best hotels might not be possible. The letter is a reminder that international spaces, despite offering new possibilities for political exchange, also remained starkly divided along conventional lines of race, gender and class.