Sexual Violence Against African-American Women

In Danielle McGuire’s book, At the Dark End of the Street, the greatest strength and the greatest weakness in her arguments about gender and the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s are the utilisation of case studies connected across time and the limitations on the definitions of sexual rights due to the dichotomous nature of her argument, respectively. By understanding the strongest and weakest aspects of McGuire’s book we can further appreciate and understand the immensely important place African-American women had in the Civil Rights Movement and how their indispensable participation allowed for the success of the overall movement.
McGuire’s claims that resistance against systematic and endemic abuse constitutes a critical aspect of the Civil Rights Movement adds valuable insight into how historians define the temporal, thematic, and racial parameters of the civil rights movement. The Civil Rights Movement has largely been portrayed as a contest for power, control, and leadership between black and white men (McGuire, xviii-xx). These narratives neglect the long struggle that African-American women endured as they fought against sexual violence (McGuire, xix). Through the initiation of legal cases against the sexual violence that occurred in private homes and public spaces, McGuire

McGuire’s larger goal is to show that African-American women actively resisted and protested the prevalence of white men’s violence towards themselves, and from that tradition of dissent grew forms of activism that shaped the Civil Rights Movement. McGuire illuminates the stories and experiences of African-American women whose lifelong battle against oppression consequently trained and prepared them for the emerging Civil Rights