At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power

At the Dark End of the Street: 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
$18.00
Publication Date: October 4th, 2011
Publisher:
Vintage
ISBN:
9780307389244
Pages:
416
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Description

Here is the courageous, groundbreaking story of Rosa Parks and Recy Taylor—a story that reinterprets the history of America's civil rights movement in terms of the sexual violence committed against Black women by white men.

"An important step to finally facing the terrible legacies of race and gender in this country.” —The Washington Post

Rosa Parks was often described as a sweet and reticent elderly woman whose tired feet caused her to defy segregation on Montgomery’s city buses, and whose supposedly solitary, spontaneous act sparked the 1955 bus boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement. The truth of who Rosa Parks was and what really lay beneath the 1955 boycott is far different from anything previously written.

In this groundbreaking and important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer—Rosa Parks—to Abbeville. In taking on this case, Parks launched a movement that exposed a ritualized history of sexual assault against Black women and added fire to the growing call for change. 

About the Author

DANIELLE L. MCGUIRE was born in Janesville, Wisconsin. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University. She is an assistant professor in the History Department at Wayne State University and lives in Detroit, Michigan.

Praise for At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power

“A story of courage.... At the Dark End of the Street is an important step to finally facing the terrible legacies of race and gender in this country.” —The Washington Post

“McGuire goes far beyond other historians in exploring the origins of the civil rights movement…. A powerful book that should alter forever how the civil rights movement is viewed.” —Grand Rapids Press

“A vital retelling…. Full of lively … storytelling, and buttressed by excellent research, Danielle McGuire’s provocative narrative forces readers to rethink what they know about that pivotal movement in U. S. history: its time frame, its actors, its legacy.” —Ms.

“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, winner of the National Book Award.
 
“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)
 
“Groundbreaking.... Inspiring.” —Elle
 
“People can learn about a new side of Rosa Parks. They can also discover other previously unknown female freedom fighters.” —Time
 
“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
 
“McGuire restores to memory the courageous black women who dared seek legal remedy, when black women and their families faced particular hazards for doing so. McGuire brings the reader through a dark time via a painful but somehow gratifying passage in this compelling, carefully documented work.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Just when we thought there couldn’t possibly be anything left to uncover about the civil rights movement, Danielle McGuire finds a new facet of that endlessly prismatic struggle at the core of our national identity.” —Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution
 
“Eye-opening.” —Sacramento Book Review

“Following the lead of pioneers like Darlene Clark Hine, Danielle McGuire details the all too ignored tactic of rape of black women in the everyday practice of southern white supremacy. Just as important, she plots resistance against this outrage as an integral facet of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This book is as essential as its history is infuriating.” —Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People

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