The common assertion is that Parks’ moment in history began in December 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Ala. But we must confront this assertion, because each time we confine her memory to that moment we erase part of her admirable character, strategic intellect and indomitable spirit.
Recy Taylor
Front of the Bus
Danielle L. McGuire’s 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 offers a vital retelling of the by-now familiar history of the civil rights movement: an often-triumphant tale of heroes who, through acts of bravery, forced […]
Alabama Apologizes to Recy Taylor 67 Years After Rape
Alabama has finally apologized, 67 years after the crime, to an African American woman who was kidnapped and raped by a group of white men who were never prosecuted. In 1944, when Recy Taylor was 24 years old, she was kidnapped at gunpoint by seven white men. Forced into their car and driven to a […]
Witness to Rape: The Resistance of Eman al-Obeidi
I saw outrage. I saw courage. I saw effrontery. Most of all, I saw resistance. By now, millions have seen the video footage of a woman in Libya–identified as Eman (or Iman) al-Obeidi–storming into a hotel in Tripoli, where foreign journalists had gathered, to tell the world that she had been gang-raped by Gaddhafi’s militia […]