Questions: SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE LONG CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT The rape of black women was so common in the postbellum South that it had become an accepted part of everyday life. For example, Fannie Lou Hamer, a significant figure in the Civil Rights Movement, was subjected to a savage and sexually abusive beating by law enforcement officers. She bravely shared her story on national television during the 1964 Democratic National Convention and continued to speak out against racial injustice until her death. In the 1930s and 1940s, the sexual abuse of black women was an everyday fear. John H. McCray, editor of the Carolina Lighthouse and Informer, reported that it was a commonplace experience for many black women in southern towns to be propositioned openly by white men. This abuse was not only perpetrated by individuals but also by those in positions of authority, such as bus drivers, police officers, and employers. Lou Hamer's grandmother, Liza Bramlett, often spoke of the horrors of slavery and how white men would abuse black women. Bramlett had twenty-three children, the majority of whom were the products of rape. This history underscored for Hamer that a black woman's body was never considered her own, a reality further cemented by the forced hysterectomy she received in 1961 and the brutal beating in the Winona, Mississippi jail in 1963. African American women used their voices to reject the stereotypes used by white supremacists to justify economic exploitation and reaffirmed their own humanity. Their testimonies were a political act that exposed the ironies of segregation and white supremacy, reversed the shame of rape, and mobilized mass movements for equal justice and protection of black womanhood. World War II marked a turning point, as black women's activism and the protection of black womanhood became part of resistance movements. This activism contributed to the organizational infrastructure necessary for events like the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, which was rooted in decades of black women's activism and gendered political appeals.

Transcript text: SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE LONG CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT The rape of black women was so common in the postbellum South that it had become an accepted part of everyday life. For example, Fannie Lou Hamer, a significant figure in the Civil Rights Movement, was subjected to a savage and sexually abusive beating by law enforcement officers. She bravely shared her story on national television during the 1964 Democratic National Convention and continued to speak out against racial injustice until her death. In the 1930s and 1940s, the sexual abuse of black women was an everyday fear. John H. McCray, editor of the Carolina Lighthouse and Informer, reported that it was a commonplace experience for many black women in southern towns to be propositioned openly by white men. This abuse was not only perpetrated by individuals but also by those in positions of authority, such as bus drivers, police officers, and employers. Lou Hamer's grandmother, Liza Bramlett, often spoke of the horrors of slavery and how white men would abuse black women. Bramlett had twenty-three children, the majority of whom were the products of rape. This history underscored for Hamer that a black woman's body was never considered her own, a reality further cemented by the forced hysterectomy she received in 1961 and the brutal beating in the Winona, Mississippi jail in 1963. African American women used their voices to reject the stereotypes used by white supremacists to justify economic exploitation and reaffirmed their own humanity. Their testimonies were a political act that exposed the ironies of segregation and white supremacy, reversed the shame of rape, and mobilized mass movements for equal justice and protection of black womanhood. World War II marked a turning point, as black women's activism and the protection of black womanhood became part of resistance movements. This activism contributed to the organizational infrastructure necessary for events like the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, which was rooted in decades of black women's activism and gendered political appeals.