At the dark end of the street: Sexualized violence, community mobilization and the African American freedom struggle

This dissertation examines how sexualized violence and the defense of black womanhood in the postwar American South served as catalysts for the modern civil rights movement. Rape, like lynching, functioned as a tool of psychological and physical intimidation that expressed white male domination and buttressed white supremacy. And yet, sexualized violence has yet to be included in the history of the black freedom struggle. Set between 1940 and 1975, At the Dark End of the Street argues that southern segregationists used sex and sexual brutality as a weapon of terror to undermine the black freedom struggle, maintain their powerful position atop a racial caste system and control access to black and white women's bodies. At the same time, protests against sexualized violence and the rape of black women also galvanized major campaigns in the civil rights movement.; My study, which draws on court documents, newspaper articles, oral history, and archival research, argues that. African-American women counterbalanced a "culture of dissemblance," in which they refrained from commenting on sexual matters, with a "tradition of testimony," in which they publicly protested sexual violence. Black women's testimonies inspired local, national and even international outrage, and prompted larger campaigns for racial justice and human dignity. Even the most oft-told and illustrious civil rights campaigns-like the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott-have an unexamined history of sexualized violence and community mobilization.; At the Dark End of the Street revises the history of twentieth century racial violence by exposing sexualized violence and the rape of black women as a political tool of white supremacy. Additionally, it challenges the historical narrative of the origins of the civil rights movement by illustrating how African American communities mobilized in response to such violence. It is the first study to analyze the impact of sexual violence and ritualistic rape on African American individuals and communities in the postwar South and contributes to a growing international discourse on sexual violence and power.