Gertrude Jeanette

Black women engaged in all kinds of travel, including riding motorcycles, enjoying the freedom to navigate their own destiny—and solo at that. The late Gertrude Hadley Jeannette, the first woman of any race to obtain a taxicab or hack license in New York City in 1942, was also the first woman to receive a motorcycle license. After acting downstairs at the Schomburg Center’s American Negro Theatre, Jeannette embarked on a career on Broadway and as playwright, as testified to in her archive and symbolized in her travel trunk. Her long life and work dramatizes the artistic nature of the journey and Black women’s pioneering spirit.