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

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Themes

Politics of Respectability

The notion of the “politics of respectability” appears throughout At the Dark End of the Street, often deeply impacting how activists plan their campaigns (76). In order to gain widespread support for their political causes, many civil rights activists often feel pressured to present a respectable image of themselves. The need to convince white Southerners of black people’s humanity particularly influences how activists choose their leaders.

This appeal to respectability shapes the Montgomery bus boycott, limiting which episodes of violence activists are able to confront. As a result, certain injustices are ignored by activists such as E. D. Nixon and Jo Ann Robinson because the victims of the injustices do not match the image that activists hope to present to the media. Claudette Colvin is one such individual whose plight is overlooked by Montgomery’s civil rights activists. Colvin is in many ways an ideal figure for civil rights activists to organize around. She is one of the first individuals to directly challenge segregation laws in court, and many black women began boycotting the segregated Montgomery buses in support of Colvin. Though Robinson hopes to plan a bigger boycott in response to Colvin’s abuse, E. D.