At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance
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 to Abbeville. Her name was Rosa Parks. In taking on this case, Parks launched a movement that ultimately changed the world.
The author gives us the never-before-told history of how the civil rights movement began; how it was in part started in protest against the ritualistic rape of black women by white men who used economic intimidation, sexual violence, and terror to derail the freedom movement; and how those forces persisted unpunished throughout the Jim Crow era when white men assaulted black women to enforce rules of racial and economic hierarchy. Black women’s protests against sexual assault and interracial rape fueled civil rights campaigns throughout the South that began during World War II and went through to the Black Power movement. The Montgomery bus boycott was the baptism, not the birth, of that struggle.
Praise for At the Dark End of the Street
Freedom Rights: New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement
In his seminal article “Freedom Then, Freedom Now,” renowned civil rights historian Steven F. Lawson described his vision for the future study of the civil rights movement. Lawson called for a deeper examination of the social, economic, and political factors that influenced the movement’s development and growth. He urged his fellow scholars to connect the “local with the national, the political with the social,” and to investigate the ideological origins of the civil rights movement, its internal dynamics, the role of women, and the significance of gender and sexuality.
In Freedom Rights: New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement, editors Danielle L. McGuire and John Dittmer follow Lawson’s example, bringing together the best new scholarship on the modern civil rights movement. The work expands our understanding of the movement by engaging issues of local and national politics, gender and race relations, family, community, and sexuality. The volume addresses cultural, legal, and social developments and also investigates the roots of the movement. Each essay highlights important moments in the history of the struggle, from the impact of the Young Women’s Christian Association on integration to the use of the arts as a form of activism. Freedom Rights not only answers Lawson’s call for a more dynamic, interactive history of the civil rights movement, but it also helps redefine the field.
Praise for Freedom Rights
Detroit 1967: Origins, Impacts, Legacies
In the summer of 1967, Detroit experienced one of the worst racially charged civil disturbances in United States history. Years of frustration generated by entrenched and institutionalized racism boiled over late on a hot July night. In an event that has been called a “riot,” “rebellion,” “uprising,” and “insurrection,” thousands of African Americans took to the street for several days of looting, arson, and gunfire. Law enforcement was overwhelmed, and it wasn’t until battle-tested federal troops arrived that the city returned to some semblance of normalcy. Fifty years later, native Detroiters cite this event as pivotal in the city’s history, yet few completely understand what happened, why it happened, or how it continues to affect the city today. Discussions of the events are often rife with misinformation and myths, and seldom take place across racial lines. It is editor Joel Stone’s intention with Detroit 1967: Origins, Impacts, Legacies to draw memories, facts, and analysis together to create a broader context for these conversations.
Praise for Detroit 1967
U.S. Women’s History: Untangling the Threads of Sisterhood
In the 1970s, feminist slogans proclaimed “Sisterhood is powerful,” and women’s historians searched through the historical archives to recover stories of solidarity and sisterhood. However, as feminist scholars have started taking a more intersectional approach—acknowledging that no woman is simply defined by her gender and that affiliations like race, class, and sexual identity are often equally powerful—women’s historians have begun to offer more varied and nuanced narratives.The ten original essays in U.S. Women’s History represent a cross-section of current research in the field. Including work from both emerging and established scholars, this collection employs innovative approaches to study both the causes that have united American women and the conflicts that have divided them. Some essays uncover little-known aspects of women’s history, while others offer a fresh take on familiar events and figures, from Rosa Parks to Take Back the Night marches.
Praise for U.S. Women’s History
Other Souths: Diversity and Difference in the U.S. South, Reconstruction to Present
Other Souths collects fifteen innovative essays that place issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality at the center of the narrative of southern history. Using a range of methodologies and approaches, contributing historians provide a fresh perspective to key events and move long-overlooked episodes into prominence.Pippa Holloway edited the volume using a chronological and event-driven framework with which many students and teachers will be familiar. The book covers well-recognized topics in American history: wars, reform efforts, social movements, and political milestones. Cultural topics are considered as well, including the development of consumer capitalism, the history of rock and roll, and the history of sport. The focus and organization of the essays underscore the value of southern history to the larger national narrative.
Praise for Other Souths
Other Recent Published Work
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Book Launch Party! Detroit 1967: Origins, Impacts, Legacies
Join us for the party! I am still working on my book about the 1967 Algiers Motel murders in Detroit. But you can hear a sneak peak of my findings at the launch party for a new book on the 1967 Detroit uprising. This collection of essays investigates the origins and aftermaths of the 1967 Detroit … Read more
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Rosa Parks and SNCC Freedom Singers: Warriors for freedom and human rights
This was probably one of the highlights of my career (so far). In this panel put together by the Central Ohio Transit Center, I joined a conversation with SNCC Freedom Singers Charles Neblett, Rutha Harris, and Betty Mae Fykes about the “power of one.” The first part of the video features the SNCC Freedom Singers … Read more
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Interview: Rape of Recy Taylor was a catalyst for Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955
Listen to an interview between Danielle McGuire and Marty Moss-Coane on WHYY in Philadelphia (2010) You know one story about Rosa Parks, but not this one: The woman who gained worldwide fame when she “refused to give up her seat” on a Montgomery bus was also a radical activist and a top NAACP investigator into … Read more
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Podcast: The Rape of Recy Taylor on Rock the Schools with Citizen Stewart
Episode 83 I Black History Month – “At The Dark End Of The Street” with Danielle McGuire and Beth Hubbard Author of “At The Dark End Of The Street” Danielle McGuire, and Producer of “The Rape of Recy Taylor” Beth Hubbard, provide a powerful history lesson in honor of Black History month by recognizing the … Read more
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