37 pages 1 hour read

Danielle L. McGuire

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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2010

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Chapters 4-6

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary: “‘There’s Open Season on Negroes Now’”

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 wanes. The dual successes of 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education and 1955’s Browder v. Gayle spur a white supremacist backlash in the South. Whites throughout the South are deeply attached to the institution of segregation, and they fear that an integrated society will lead to “interracial sexuality” (129). Prominent political figures such as Senators Herman Talmadge and James O. Eastland argue that fighting against integration and miscegenation is God’s will, stirring up many Southerner’s anger against the Supreme Court’s ruling that the South must integrate. Many whites join groups such as the White Citizens’ Councils and the Ku Klux Klan, which openly uses violence to intimidate blacks from attempting to integrate. Acts of sexual violence, such as the rape of black women or the castration of black men, are at the core of these terrorist groups’ tactics.

One particularly famous incident of racial violence is the gruesome murder of Emmett Till. In 1955, Till travels from Chicago to Mississippi to see his uncle. While in Mississippi, Till visits a convenience store to buy bubblegum.