#danielle mcguire

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In Oprah's speech at the Golden Globes, she mentioned Recy Taylor, who's life reflects the plight of Black women in the South leading up to the Civil Rights movement (and beyond). Want to learn more about Recy? Stop by the library or your local bookstore and grab a copy of 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.

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PODCAST: The sexual assault case that spurred the Civil Rights movement

PODCAST: The sexual assault case that spurred the Civil Rights movement

On September 3, 1944 a car full of white boys pulled up and demanded that Recy Taylor come with them. She was involved in some crime and they intended to straighten it out, they told her. She was a 24 years old, a mother, and a wife, walking home from church with a friend.

They took her to a secluded place, raped her, then threatened to kill her if she told anyone.

When the case became widely…

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On Being A Black Woman, A Target.

On Being Young -- A Woman -- And Colored by Marita O. Bonner

 Marita O. Bonner’s words caught me once before in another class, but as I was finishing the reading of Danielle McGuire’s At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance I found myself remembering Bonner’s words in her essay “On Being Young—A Woman—And Colored”.  In her essay Bonner details the oppression of  young, female and black separately and even tells you how to fight. It was written in the 1920′s and though used to compare to McGuire’s 1950′s, 1960′s black female experience it still holds true. Specifically, in Bonner’s essay she brings the reader’s attention to the discrimination black women receive and how it differs from that of white women. In her essay she says, “Why can’t they then perceive that there is a difference in the glance from a pair of eyes that look, mildly docile, at “white ladies” and those that, impersonally and perceptively—aware of distinctions—see only women who happen to be white?” (Bonner 1246)  Here she states clearly that from her experience and that of many other black women it’s very clear to them that her being a woman is invisible. I think of McGuire’s chapter 6 of her book, titled “A Black Woman’s Body was Never Hers Alone” (McGuire 207-209) in it she details many issues of sexual assault from white men onto black women and how ubiquitous it was for black women and girls to fall victim to these assaults. On the flip, she describes how white supremacist utilized the fear of race mixing, or the sexual assault of black men onto white women to garner resistance to the civil rights movement. There were serious consequences for black men that even dared to look at a white woman, and for white men that assaulted and brutalized black women, sometimes they met justice but mostly they got off without a scratch. The distinctions between which women are worthy of the protection from men’s unwanted advances showed a clear difference or as Bonner puts it –distinction that the only women anyone saw was white.

 In her essay Bonner states, “Why do they see a colored woman only as a gross collection of desires, all uncontrolled, reaching out for their Apollos and the Quasimodos with avid indiscrimination?” Here plainly, Bonner tells us that black women are only what they think they are, sexual deviants ran by their libido with no real control and no discrimination. A notion that holds true even in McGuire’s book that black women are so sexual that they don’t care who he is, what he does or where it happens an excuse used for years to justify the common occurrence of sexual assault perpetuated by white men onto black women.

Bonner, Marita O. “On Being Young, A Woman and Colored.”  Denver School of Arts. Web. 23 February 2016.

McGuire, Danielle. At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance. New York: Random House. 2010. Print.