cover image 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

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

Danielle L. McGuire, Knopf, $27.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-307-26906-5

McGuire's "new history" shines fresh light upon the germinal role of black women in the birth and development of the civil rights movement. "For decades," she writes, "the Montgomery bus boycott has been told as a story triggered by Rosa Parks's spontaneous refusal to give up her seat followed by the triumphant leadership of men." McGuire, assistant professor of history at Wayne State University, goes behind that story to tell of black women's struggles against abuse by white bus drivers and police officers that launched the boycott. She foregrounds black women's experiences of "verbal, physical, and sexual abuse" as prime movers of the grassroots movement. From the rape of Recy Taylor (1944) to the rape of Joan Little (1975), McGuire restores to memory the courageous black women who dared seek legal remedy, when black women and their families faced particular hazards for doing so. McGuire brings the reader through a dark time via a painful but somehow gratifying passage in this compelling, carefully documented work. (Sept.)