ABSTRACT

In the May 1970 inaugural issue, Essence magazine published its first of many travel columns offering advice to Black women readers seeking excursions in local, national, and global tourism markets. Titled “Traveling Bag” during much of the decade before it was replaced by “The Go Guide,” the column regularly offered practical instruction for securing passports, organizing documents, efficient packing, luggage selection, working with travel agents, arranging vaccinations, gauging currency rates, and maneuvering the “fine art of tipping.” Contributors writing for “Traveling Bag” and other vacation and tourism columns-such as “A Travel Tale,” which presented personalized, intimate travel stories-also explored writers’ trips, be they across the country or overseas. Each of these columns served as guidance for what might occur if readers visited those locations themselves. Most of the advice was shaded by racialized, class-focused, and gendered considerations. Essence saw itself as catering to a growing professional class of Black women with the disposable income to fund such trips and their necessary accoutrements. The writers and editors also believed that their primarily Black female readers were committed to using the luxury of travel to enhance cultural awareness and reinforce a sense of independence and freedom. As a result, the education on travel that Essence offered served a variety of functions. It was intended to be both prescriptive while encouraging freedom. It urged readers to freely partake in public amusements, while also urging mindfulness as to the larger, often fraught meaning of the Black

female presence in public spaces. In many ways, the work of Essence travel columns summarizes the entirety of both the history and cultural of work of travel writing for Black Americans in general.