The Real Rosa Parks, A Radical Activist and Top NAACP Investigator.
1964-Black children integrate pool of Monson Motel. To force them out, owner pours acid into the water. |
So, why don't we know this? Could it be, the powers that be want us to believe the only way change occurs is through magical random acts of courage? Not through non-violent mass organizing and the the hard work of regular individuals coming together to build the infrastructure necessary for an effective movement?
Well, thank goodness for people like Danielle L. McGuire, author 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, who, after researching the Recy Taylor case, discovered documentation that proved Rosa Parks was a top investigator into the routine and ritual rape of black women by white men in the mid-1940s. She worked on behalf of brutalized black women, helping to catalyze one of the more important, but wholly overlooked, building blocks for the American Civil Rights movement, for well over ten years before she “refused to give up her seat” on that Montgomery bus on December 1,1955.
Integrating St. Augustine's "white only" beaches. |
The brutal sexual violence of black women by white men, occurring at the same time that black men risked lynching, if they even glanced at a white woman, demonstrates the role that weaponized sexuality played in maintaining white supremacy. This, of course, dates back to the end of the Civil War, where interlocking race and sex was used in an effort to undermine the postwar politics of non-racial citizenship.
It's no wonder we're so thoroughly conditioned to fear sexuality. What good is a weapon if it doesn't make the people tremble in fear?
Martin Luther King's Last Testimony
"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."Links:
— The final words from Martin Luther King's last speech, given in Memphis Tennessee the night before he was assasinated on April 4, 1968
Civil Rights Movement Veterans
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
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