At The Dark End Of The Street Summary

In her book At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance, Danielle McGuire provides a thought provoking reinterpretation of the origins of the civil rights movement and how it was in part started by protests against the ritualistic rape of black women.. McGuire noticed that the popular, canonical texts that describe the struggle of African Americans during the civil rights era often exclusively focus on conflicts between black and white men. Therefore, McGuire attempts to broaden the lenses with which we view the civil rights movement by emphasizing the roles of gender and sexual violence. This focus disproves the common misconception that race was the only fundamental issue in the struggle for equal rights: “If we understand

the role rape and sexual violence played in African American’s daily lives and within the larger freedom struggle, we have to reinterpret, if not rewrite, the history of the civil rights movement. “(xx). McGuire goes on to argue that rape and other forms of sexual violence were the primary methods used to oppress black women, and thus were the factors that motivated them to engage in political activism. These initial; protests against sexual assault and rape, according to McGuire, formed that basis of what would become civil rights campaigns throughout the South.
Another major component of McGuire’s argument is that the white men perpetrating these rapes were attempting to use acts of sexual violence, along with economic intimidation, to enforce the southern racial hierarchy. She goes on to demonstrate the many ways in which white supremacy in the Jim Crow South was ultimately about sex, and who would retain control over women’s bodies. “By policing white women and black men’s sexual and marital choices while retaining power over black women’s bodies, white men retained their position at the top of the racial and sexual hierarchy,” suggests that the refusal to integrate and the cycle of racially based violence were caused by the fear of the losing control over women (p. 200).
Importantly, McGuire ties in the under-explored and often untouchable subject of the underlying roles rape, sex, and gender played in racism and the civil rights movement, with the threat of black rape of white women used as a shield for the very real and unchecked epidemic of white men raping black women and murdering black men, often with no consequences whatsoever, and no protection offered to victims.

It was sexual abuse and violence against women that first unified the civil rights movement, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott and some of the first court victories securing legal protection for black Americans against racial violence. However, women's roles in the movement were obscured almost immediately, both by the press and by the male leaders themselves. Readers will learn that about Parks in McGuire's fine narrative, and it's about time they did so. They will also learn that Parks was an investigator for the local branch (Montgomery, AL) of the NAACP. She would go and interview African American women who had been brutalized by white men -- something all too frequent during these years. McGuire uses several rape cases (white men raping African American women or teenaged girls) that triggered opposition from the NAACP, and helped push the civil rights era to the forefront of American politics. That's an aspect of the Civil Rights Movement you never hear--the role of sexual violence against African American women as a galvanizing force, and McGuire makes a

compelling and fascinating case for it. For example, McGuire’s readers see how and why Rosa Parks, instead of becoming a leader of the movement she helped to start, was turned into a symbol of virtuous black womanhood who was sainted and celebrated for her quiet dignity, prim demeanor, and middle-class propriety—her radicalism all but erased. Consequently, proving the McGuire’s point that black women in the civil rights movement, whose courage and fortitude helped to transform America, were reduced to the footnotes of history.
McGuire does a wonderful job of fleshing out the stories of well-known but misrepresented activists like Rosa Parks, often remembered as the weary woman too tired to give up her seat on a bus - an almost accidental symbol - rather than the fiery, lifelong activist she was.

McGuire’s attention to Park’s upbringing and circumstances surrounding her famous bus protest shed new light on how she was able to use her own power to defend her human rights. This new interpretation is thus divorced from the “King-centric” view that is so popular in most history textbooks (p. 108). McGuire shows that it was women like Parks and Jo Ann Robinson who started the Montgomery Bus boycott, while male figures like Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. were more the voice to the people, rather than the brains behind the

movement.
A section or point that was missing from the argument was that while McGuire asserts that the violence against African American women propelled African American men to protect them and by extension fight for their human rights, McGuire doesn’t discuss how this in turn makes women subordinate to men by them needing to be “protected.” If McGuire really wants to bring the gender argument home, I would think this point would at least be mentioned somewhere in the body of the text. Also, this thought is extremely heteronormative, and it would have been nice to see examples of other sexualities during the Civil Rights Movement in her book.
In sum, this new view of the Civil Rights Movement presented by McGuire is vital to the understanding of the movement. Reading McGuire's book really shed light on an aspect of the Civil Rights Movement for me that I hadn't fully considered, and provided another way for me to contextualize the era and to think about all the factors and people involved in the Movement. It also forces us to think about race, class, gender, and rape as an intrinsic part of the violence of the civil rights movement. It's a brutal topic, but one that needs to be explored and recognized in order to come to a better understanding of an era that still influences American social and political history. It's a tough read, yes - one of the toughest I've read in a while; there is no redeeming what was allowed to happen, no happy conclusion, but there is inspiration to be found in women who refused to let their humanity be stolen from them in the face of terrorism that seems so unimaginable. One can't help but see how much of this legacy continues in the sexism of the present day, and how high the cost of forgetting can be.