Rosa Parks, a Sexual Violence Activist
According to Danielle L. McGuire in her text At the Dark End of the Street, Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson’s involvement with the bus boycotts was only partially motivated by Black people having the right to sit freely. A major component was that Black women were being raped by white men in the process of waiting for a bus or while riding on the bus. This initiative was not just limited to the buses or bus stops.
Bus Boycott Focused on the Rapes of Black Women
In an effort to spread awareness and fight for the justice of Black women who were sexually assaulted by white men, Parks and Robinson in 1955 organized a one-day bus boycott. According to At the Dark End of the Street, “The protest, intended to last twenty-four hours, became a yearlong struggle for dignity and justice. It broke the back of the Montgomery city bus lines and bankrupted the company.”
Black Women Raped While Trying to Find Work
According to McGuire, Black women and girls were lured away by white men for the promises of receiving working opportunities. She states that, “White men lured black women and girls away from home with promises of steady work and better wages; attacked them on the job; abducted them at gunpoint while traveling to or from home, work, or church; raped them as a form of retribution or to enforce rules of racial and economic hierarchy; sexually humiliated and assaulted them on streetcars and buses, in taxicabs and trains, and in other public spaces.”
