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

Content Warning: The source material and this study guide discuss rape and anti-Black racism.

In At the Dark End of the Street, historian Danielle L. McGuire tells the untold history of the relationship between sexual violence and the civil rights movement. The history of sexual violence committed by white men against Black women stretches back to America’s colonial period. During that time, enslavers frequently raped enslaved women as a way of asserting their power. This use of rape as “a weapon of terror” continued throughout the 20th century as white men in the South frequently abducted and rape Black women (xviii). Rape was also used to justify the lynching of Black men who were falsely accused of raping white women.

Rather than stay silent, many Black women have spoken out against these acts of sexual violence, creating a “tradition of testimony and protest” that includes abolitionists such as Harriet Jacobs and activists such as Rosa Parks (xx). McGuire argues that sexual violence against Black women frequently catalyzed activists to protest the larger institution of white supremacy. Her book is meant to demonstrate the centrality of sexual violence in the civil rights movement.

To illustrate this point, McGuire opens her Prologue with an

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