Rosa Parks was often described as a sweet and reticent elderly woman whose tired feet caused her to defy segregation on Montgomery’s city buses, and whose supposedly solitary, spontaneous act sparked the 1955 bus boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement.
The truth of who Rosa Parks was and what really lay beneath the 1955 boycott is far different from anything previously written.
In this groundbreaking and important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead.
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This is no surprise to me. The history of slavery told the many stories of black women being raped by their white masters. This treatment of black women also continued during the days of the Civil Rights Movement. That is why it upsets me so much when there is domestic violence against women, especially black women when most black men know the struggle of blacs during slavery an dthe Civil Rights Movement.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree. Its a shame how women still till this day are degraded, sexually harassed, and raped by our own people. It seems as though our black men would understand the struggles that we as one has overcome over a period of decades; however instead they continue to disrespect women as though the Jim Crow days never even existed.
ReplyDeleteAlso I will like to make a point about Rosa Parks. A lot of people believe still till this day that she was the firsst person to refuse to get up from her seat, however, she is not. A woman named Claudette Colvin in fact refused her seat months before Rosa Park. The only reason why Rosa Parks recieved so much publicity is becuase she was descibed as being a better role model for society rather than the unwed teenage mother. They used the word unappropriate to describe Claudette. In my opinion our own black people were discrimanating aganist their own race for assuming those facts.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that we(blacks) were once, and stil in some instances, degraded, is the history that I want my son to know. I want him to know all of it, the bad, the hideous and the impossible things that happened to us as a people..to us as black women, during a time when we had no voice or rights. I believe, if left to some whites, we would still be in that abnormal situation.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad y'all are talking about the book. I would be happy to answer any questions or criticisms!
ReplyDeleteDanielle McGuire
It sometimes takes a tragic event such as this rape of the young woman to began life changing occurances for the betterment of all people's rights.I can image the pain that Mrs. Parks felt for the you lady as she was working on the story, who was simply trying to go home after a church event. No person should be subjected to that kind of brutal mistreatment. I think Mrs. Parks just wanted to find a way in which she could contribute to a cause that would help change the way people were treated.
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