Jitney: The Intricate Black Network Of Transportation

a smiling driver of a utility vehicle
Via pexels
Adé Hennis
January 21, 2025

The taxi system hated us. It didn’t allow Black passengers and didn't hire Black drivers. So, in the early 1900s, we shifted towards a system that centered our communities.

In 1914 jitneys began flooding the West Coast streets. They were streetcar drivers, offering rides for our people when buses and taxis discriminated against us by refusing service, spiking fares, and enforcing segregation. Thousands of jitneys stretched from the West to the South within only a year.

Jitney was slang for nickel, the exact fare passengers paid for the ride. But it was more than affordable transportation—drivers used their own cars and helped one another with expenses like real estate. There weren’t any mobile apps, but jitney phone lines were always jumping.

Jitneys weren’t just drivers, they were superheroes. They sprang into action during civil injustice, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, where they transported residents who refused to ride segregated buses, helping sustain the protest.

The jitney system lives on today in our cultures, where dollar cabs continue to be a staple our people rely on because of a corrupt transportation system. This shows that when we’re stripped of our resources, we can rely on each other to give us a Lyft while on the road toward liberation.

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