At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire

Perhaps the most infamous case reported in At the Dark End of the Street was the brutal gang rape and beating of the young wife and mother Recy Taylor, of Abbeville, Alabama, by six white men armed with knives and guns. By the time she was arrested in 1955 for refusing to vacate her seat, she was an experienced, intrepid reporter for the organization having investigated scores of cases voter intimidation, sexual violence, beatings and other atrocities committed by whites against blacks, especially black women, in Alabama. The job found her interviewing and documenting incidents of sexual violence against black women throughout rural Alabama. That same year she joined the Montgomery, Alabama chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and was elected secretary. Blake, the very same bus driver who had her arrested on that fateful day, because she refused to exit the bus and reenter by the rear door after she had paid her fare. That treatment included rape and other sexual violence. She and other black women had long complained about the racist treatment they received on the buses in Montgomery, Alabama.

Rosa Parks, however, was no victim of anything. She had been tracked down by the Zeitgeist–the spirit of the times.” the victim–emphasis mine–of both the forces of history and the forces of destiny. Forty-two years old at the time of the bus boycott, she was described by Martin Luther King Jr, as “. Had she been Catholic she surely would have been canonized by now St. Historically she has been depicted as a prim, virtuous, diminutive lady who was merely too tired after a long day at work to move from her seat. Rosa Parks is often referred to as the Mother of the modern civil rights movement.

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 by Danielle L. McGuire