Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)For many years, we've been taught the comforting narrative of the civil rights movement as a series of nonviolent protests, led by ministers, that so moved the hearts of northern white America that the courts and the government ruled and legislated white supremacy out of existence. Danielle McGuire's At the Dark End of the Street rewrites the story, affirms the pivotal role of black women in the freedom movement, and locates its origins in the most horrific realities of the Jim Crow south. It's a gripping, essential read for anyone who wants to understand the forces that drove the movement into high gear in the 1950s and '60s: namely, the night-riding ritual of white-on-black rape and the decades-long struggle of black women to stand up to these attacks when the police and the courts would not. McGuire traces this struggle back a decade before the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott through the efforts of none other than Rosa Parks--whose "tired feet" became a movement symbol that overshadowed her militancy--to investigate and publicize Alabama rape cases as an NAACP field secretary. McGuire powerfully relates the story of violence and resistance and sacrifice and triumph over 30 years, into the 1970s, and does a masterful job of setting the record straight. If you're at all interested in understanding why this country had to change, how it did change, and who changed it, At the Dark End of the Street is an absolute must-read.
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