Earlier this month, we celebrated the anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus, so that a white man could sit down. This seemingly small event ignited what was to be known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. As the story goes, she was tired from work and didn’t want to stand. In actuality she was tired, but not from her work as a seamstress.
Prior to that history changing moment, Mrs. Parks was a fierce anti-rape activist. For years, black women were subjected to racial sexual violence from white men and were given no relief from the law. So by sitting down, Mrs. Parks was in fact standing up for her fellow black women who were subjected to all forms of harassment on the bus system.
This brings me to the above trailer, You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder in the South. After enduring years of rape, Ruby McCollum, walked into the office of a prominent white doctor and killed him in front of his patients. Although this documentary focuses on the story of one woman, it highlights a serious matter that gets glossed over by the storytellers of our history.