Women's experiences in movement building

Danielle L. McGuire wrote At the Dark End of the Street (2010) that one of the major catalysts of the Civil Rights Movement was violence against black women. The bus boycotts in Montgomery began because of threats, violence and sexual terror, in addition to the indignities of African-Americans having to ride in the back of the bus. McGuire documented the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, by seven white men.

The local NAACP sent their best field organizer Rosa Parks to Abbeville to investigate the case and bring the men to trial. She led a coalition of mainly female activists, including members of the Southern Negro Youth Council to pressure both state and national efforts on Taylor's behalf.  Even though the outcome of the case (including a retrial) was not good for Taylor, Park's work was crucial background for the alliances created for the bus boycotts. This case, and a coalition of activists at a local level, proved to be a major victory for the formation of the Civil Rights Movement because of the successful mobilization of activists across the nation.

The stories of black men are important, but they are not a stand-in for the stories of all black people. Even though today we remember a young Martin Luther King  Jr. grabbed the headlines during the Montgomery Bus Boycotts of 1955-56, black women paid the day-to-day price of organizing and doing the field work. Women's contributions in the Civil Rights Movement are often minimized in favor of a “great man” reading of history.