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 1944, Recy Taylor was a 24-year-old woman living in Abbeville, Alabama. One day, Taylor was abducted at gunpoint by a group of six white men, who claimed that Taylor was wanted by the town sheriff. Instead of escorting her to the sheriff’s office, however, the men drove her into the woods and raped her. Afterward, a distraught Taylor was found by her father, who took her to the police to report the crime. Though Taylor did not know the names of any of her assailants, she remembered that they drove a green Chevrolet, leading to the identification of Hugo Wilson, the car’s owner. Though Wilson admitted to having sex with Taylor, he claimed that the sex was consensual. He also claimed that the men paid Taylor for the sex because she was a sex worker.

Several days later, Taylor got in contact with the NAACP, which sent Rosa Parks to document the crime. At a grand jury meeting a month later, an all-white and all-male jury refused to indict any of the men for rape. However, Parks and other Alabama activists began to publicize Taylor’s story, leading to a national outcry and a letter-writing campaign urging the Alabama governor to prosecute her assailants. The investigation into her case was reopened, and one of the six rapists confessed that he used a gun to coerce Taylor into having sex. Despite this new evidence, a second grand jury again refused to indict any of the men with rape charges. Though Taylor did not receive justice through her court case, her courage and perseverance brought the injustice to the attention of the civil rights movement, galvanizing it.

Betty Jean Owens was a student studying at Tallahassee’s historically Black Florida A&M University (FAMU). On the night of May 2, 1959, four white men abducted Owens. They had been drinking, and they decided that they wanted to find a Black woman to rape. They approached a car of FAMU students returning from a concert, and they used a knife to force Owens into their car. The men then took Owens into the woods, where they raped her seven times. Owens’s friends quickly went to the police, who pursued the four men and arrested them. The men were unafraid of being punished for their crime, and they laughed while they provided statements to the police, openly admitting to using weapons to force Owens into having sex with them.

News of the rape angered the FAMU community, which launched protests to demand justice for Owens. On May 6, a grand jury meeting was called, and Owens attended, accompanied by a nurse due to the severity of her injuries. One month later, the trial of the four men began. Owens took the stand and testified in front of hundreds of people. She described the rape in detail, explaining that she didn’t fight the men because she feared that they would kill her. The defense attempted to paint Owens as a promiscuous woman and a sex worker, suggesting that Owens had agreed to have sex with the men in exchange for money. Though the jury found the men guilty of rape, they recommended a more lenient sentence, allowing the men to receive life sentences instead of executions. While some Black people saw the trial as a sign that Southern courts were beginning to take the rape of Black women seriously, others felt that the lack of a death sentence demonstrated the legal system’s continuing preferential treatment toward white people.

In August 1974, Joan Little attacked and killed her jailer, Clarence Alligood, after he tried to rape her. Little then escaped from prison. Police discovered Alligood’s corpse in her cell with his pants off and semen dripping on his leg. They believed that Little purposefully seduced Alligood to kill him and escape, though Little claimed that she only acted in self-defense. In the subsequent trial, Little was defended by attorney Jerry Paul, a white lawyer known for his liberal politics and support of civil rights. Many North Carolina publications ran negative stories about Little, describing her previous arrests for armed robberies. Paul, however, argued that Little was a victim of a long tradition of sexual violence in the South, garnering her national attention.

Throughout the country, individuals (including Rosa Parks) formed organizations in support of Little, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for her defense fund. Paul hired a team of social scientists to argue that Little’s case must have a diverse jury for it to be tried fairly, leading to a jury that was mixed in terms of both race and gender. By calling many other victims of sexual violence from Little’s prison to the stand, Paul proves to the jury that Little’s rape was part of a pattern of racist and sexist abuse. The jury unanimously voted to acquit Little, and this decision was viewed by many Black activists as a clear sign of progress in the civil rights movement.