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

In Chapter 4, McGuire focuses on the “fallow years” of the civil rights movement from 1956 to 1960 (129), during which the energy of the movement waned. The dual successes of 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education and 1955’s Browder v. Gayle spurred a white supremacist backlash in the South. White people throughout the South were deeply attached to the institution of segregation, and they feared that an integrated society would lead to “interracial sexuality” (129). Prominent political figures such as Senators Herman Talmadge and James O. Eastland argued that fighting against integration and miscegenation was God’s will, stirring up many Southerners’ anger against the Supreme Court’s ruling that the South must integrate. Many white people joined groups such as the White Citizens’ Councils and the Ku Klux Klan, which openly used violence to intimidate Black people from attempting to integrate. Acts of sexual violence, such as the rape of Black women or the castration of Black men, were at the core of these terrorist groups’ tactics.

One particularly famous incident of racist violence is the gruesome murder of Emmett Till. In 1955, 14-year-old Till traveled from Chicago to Mississippi to see his uncle. While in Mississippi, Till visited a convenience store to buy bubblegum.