In 1967, Police murdered 3 Black teenagers at the Algiers Motel in Detroit. In 2024, a historical marker was dedicated in their honor. READ MORE August 29, 2024 A police killing. A coverup. And a history of silence. READ MORE August 25, 2021 Happy 100th Birthday, Recy Taylor! READ MORE December 30, 2019 Letters for Betty Jean Owens READ MORE October 25, 2018 Landmark 1959 rape case in Tallahassee, Florida was central to the Civil Rights Movement READ MORE March 1, 2018 Recy Taylor honored by Congressional Black Caucus READ MORE February 13, 2018 Marginalized Women, like Shawana Hall, are Still the Most Vulnerable to Sexual Violence and Rape READ MORE January 16, 2018 Recy Taylor and How the Civil Rights Movement is Rooted in Resistance to Rape READ MORE January 16, 2018 Black Women Are Central to the Struggle Against Sexual Violence READ MORE January 16, 2018 {{title}} READ MORE {{date}} Meeting Mrs. Recy Taylor: On Being White and Writing Black History READ MORE November 16, 2017 The Maid and Mr. Charlie: Rosa Parks and Sexual Violence READ MORE November 9, 2017 {{title}} READ MORE {{date}} The Roots of the 1967 Detroit Rebellion READ MORE July 28, 2017 Detroit Police killed their three sons at the Algiers Motel. No one ever said sorry. READ MORE July 27, 2017 Book Launch Party! Detroit 1967: Origins, Impacts, Legacies READ MORE May 9, 2017 Rosa Parks and SNCC Freedom Singers: Warriors for freedom and human rights READ MORE April 19, 2017 Interview: Rape of Recy Taylor was a catalyst for Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 READ MORE April 19, 2017 Podcast: The Rape of Recy Taylor on Rock the Schools with Citizen Stewart READ MORE January 31, 2017 Discussion: Recy Taylor, Rosa Parks and Resistance READ MORE December 21, 2016 Understanding Rape as a Weapon of Terror: How the film Birth of a Nation missed an opportunity READ MORE October 5, 2016 #CharlestonSyllabus READ MORE June 30, 2015 Lecture: To Gain Title to Our Bodies: Black Women and the Long Civil Rights Movement READ MORE May 21, 2015 At the Dark End of the Street Wins the Lillian Smith Award READ MORE April 19, 2015 On the 100th Anniversary of Rosa Parks’ birth, Let’s Remember How Brave She Really Was. READ MORE February 5, 2013 {{title}} READ MORE {{date}} Stateside: The Life and Legacy of Rosa Parks READ MORE February 4, 2013 Recy Taylor has a wikipedia page! READ MORE January 29, 2013 {{title}} READ MORE {{date}} {{title}} READ MORE {{date}}

Danielle McGuire, PhD, is an award-winning Civil Rights historian, public speaker and author of 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 (Knopf). She is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and has appeared on PBS, CNN, MSNBC, Headline News, National Public Radio, and BookTV. Her popular essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Detroit Free Press, Bridge Magazine, Washington Post, Huffington Post and CNN.com. She serves as a consultant on documentary films such as The Rape of Recy Taylor and You Belong to Me: The Ruby McCollum Story. She also helps curate educational historical tours and civil rights-related curricula for secondary schools and serves on the advisory board of History Studio. She is currently at work on a book about police violence in Detroit in 1967, to be published by Knopf.

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Current Project:

Murder in the Motor City: The 1967 Detroit Riot and American Injustice

The story of the Algiers Motel murders and subsequent trials, the main narrative thread of Murder in the Motor City, captures, in its tragic horror, the often hidden infrastructure of northern racism and white supremacy. From rabid residential segregation and job discrimination to racialized and sexual violence to ecumenic and educational disparities and the everyday injustices and biased sentencing in the judicial system, racial inequality and segregation in Detroit was every bit as virulent as it was in the South. Maybe even worse.

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Recent Blog Posts

In 1967, Police murdered 3 Black teenagers at the Algiers Motel in Detroit. In 2024, a historical marker was dedicated in their honor.

A historical marker and a memorial to the victims of police violence Survivors and victims’ family members gathered together on July 26, 2024 for the dedication of the Algiers Motel historical marker. 57 years earlier, on July 26, 1967, three Detroit policemen and a private guard raided the Algiers Motel on the third night of…
Read More In 1967, Police murdered 3 Black teenagers at the Algiers Motel in Detroit. In 2024, a historical marker was dedicated in their honor.

Happy 100th Birthday, Recy Taylor!

Happy 100th Birthday, Recy Taylor! Recy Taylor was born on New Year’s Eve in 1919, a crucible of violence & resistance. It was the year of the “Red Summer” when white terrorists rampaged through black towns and across the country in an orgy of violence.  WEB DuBois said “We return from fighting. We return fighting.”…
Read More Happy 100th Birthday, Recy Taylor!

Letters for Betty Jean Owens

Last night I spoke with Betty Jean Owens’s grandson, Amonte Martin. He and I talked over the past decade–first when my Journal of American History article came out and since my book was released in 2010. We chatted about history, family and especially the health and well-being of his grandmother, Betty Jean Owens, who was…
Read More Letters for Betty Jean Owens

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Reviews

Praise for Danielle McGuire’s most recent book: At the Dark End of the Street

  • Ms. Magazine

    McGuire’s provocative narrative forces readers to rethink what they know about that pivotal moment in U.S. history: its time frame, its actors, its legacy.

  • Nell Irvin Painter

    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.

  • Diane McWhorter

    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. By reinterpreting black liberation through the lens of organized resistance to white male sexual aggression against African-American women, McGuire ingeniously upends the white race’s ultimate rationale for its violent subjugation of blacks—imputed black male sexual aggression against white women. It is an original premise, and At the Dark End of the Street delivers on it with scholarly authority and narrative polish.

  • Publisher’s Weekly

    McGuire’s “new history” shines fresh light upon the germinal role of black women in the birth and development of the civil rights movement.

  • Kevin Boyle

    At the Dark End of the Street is 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.

  • Timothy B. Tyson

    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.

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Danielle McGuire is a writer and historian interested in the African American freedom struggle. She lives with her husband and two children in Metro Detroit.

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