Black Women, Rape, and Resistance–a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power
Danielle L. McGuire’s At the Dark End of the Street documents the widespread rape of black women by white men in the south, and argues that responding to these crimes served as a catalyst for the Civil Rights movement. While such rapes were common, they were rarely prosecuted, and seeking justice became a key demand of civil rights workers. McGuire tells how Rosa Parks’s activism began long before her role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when she was sent by the NAACP to investigate the rape of Recy Taylor, a twenty-four-year-old mother. At the Dark End of the Street not only recovers the truth of these horrific incidents of sexual violence, but ultimately reveals a heretofore under-studied aspect of the Civil Rights Movement.
Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:
“This gripping story changes the history books, giving us a revised Rosa Parks and a new civil rights story. You can’t write a general U.S. history without altering crucial sentences because of McGuire’s work. Masterfully narrated, At the Dark End of the Street presents a deep civil rights movement with women at the center, a narrative as poignant, painful and complicated as our own lives.” —Timothy B. Tyson, author of Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story
“Valuable for reminding us of Parks’s radicalism. She was not a frail old lady who wouldn’t get up from her bus seat ‘because she was tired and her feet ached.’ . . . A welcome corrective.” —The Independent Weekly (Raleigh, NC)
“One of those rare studies that makes a well-known story seem startlingly new. Anyone who thinks he knows the history of the modern civil rights movement needs to read this terrifying, illuminating book.” —Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age
For more information on the publication, click here.
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