At The Dark End Of The Street Summary

In her book At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance, Danielle McGuire provides a thought provoking reinterpretation of the origins of the civil rights movement and how it was in part started by protests against the ritualistic rape of black women.. McGuire noticed that the popular, canonical texts that describe the struggle of African Americans during the civil rights era often exclusively focus on conflicts between black and white men. Therefore, McGuire attempts to broaden the lenses with which we view the civil rights movement by emphasizing the roles of gender and sexual violence. This focus disproves the common misconception that race was the only fundamental issue in the struggle for equal rights: “If we understand

It was sexual abuse and violence against women that first unified the civil rights movement, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott and some of the first court victories securing legal protection for black Americans against racial violence. However, women's roles in the movement were obscured almost immediately, both by the press and by the male leaders themselves. Readers will learn that about Parks in McGuire's fine narrative, and it's about time they did so. They will also learn that Parks was an investigator for the local branch (Montgomery, AL) of the NAACP. She would go and interview African American women who had been brutalized by white men -- something all too frequent during these years. McGuire uses several rape cases (white men raping African American women or teenaged girls) that triggered opposition from the NAACP, and helped push the civil rights era to the forefront of American politics. That's an aspect of the Civil Rights Movement you never hear--the role of sexual violence against African American women as a galvanizing force, and McGuire makes a

McGuire’s attention to Park’s upbringing and circumstances surrounding her famous bus protest shed new light on how she was able to use her own power to defend her human rights. This new interpretation is thus divorced from the “King-centric” view that is so popular in most history textbooks (p. 108). McGuire shows that it was women like Parks and Jo Ann Robinson who started the Montgomery Bus boycott, while male figures like Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. were more the voice to the people, rather than the brains behind the