sees the question in the eyes of~

有名なRosa Parksのbus boycott/sit-in事件。わたしも関係している三省堂さんの中学校検定教科書「New Crown」（3年生 Les. 6 "I have a dream"）でもとり上げられていますが，このような背景があるとはまったく知りませんでした。まさにsee the question in the eyesです。久しぶりに良い記事に出会いました。少し長めですが，全部掲載しておきます。（UG）
Professor: Dig deeper into Rosa Parks' story
McGuire: Black women paved the way for well-known boycotts and sit-ins.
By Cassandra Spratling
DETROIT — Even if they don't say it, Danielle McGuire sees the question in the eyes of some black students when they first enter her classroom at Wayne State University, where she teaches African-American history.
"What does this white lady know about this?"
By the end of the semester, the doubters will likely acknowledge: McGuire really knows her stuff.
McGuire's stuff is African-American history, particularly the civil rights movement.
But there are critical details about the movement that she believes historians have overlooked or downplayed — particularly the commonplace rapes and sexual abuse of black women by white men coupled with black women's organized resistance to it.
McGuire believes that the actions of black women paved the way for well-known boycotts and sit-ins such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama.
She captures the stories of some of those women in her new book, "At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance — A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power," (Knopf, $27.95).
"I hope that my book gives the women a megaphone ... so their voices can never be silenced again," McGuire says.
Q: What led you to write about sexual abuse of black women and their resistance to it?
A: I was listening to a story on NPR about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Joe Azbell, the editor of the daily newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, was being interviewed. He said Gertrude Perkins had as much to do with the boycott as anyone else. I said, "Who is this lady?" I thought I knew all about the boycott. The next day I went and ordered copies of the Advertiser from the 1940s and 1950s to find out what Gertrude Perkins had to do with anything.
Q: Who was she and what did she have to do with the boycott?
A: She was this 25-year-old African-American woman who in 1949 was walking home from a party and two uniformed white police officers in Montgomery picked her up, drove her outside of town and raped her. She reported it to her minister, who got other ministers together to hold the police department accountable.
There was a movement to defend Gertrude Perkins. As I kept looking, I found that these attacks happened all the time in the 1940s and 1950s. Black women would testify about it in the courts, to their ministers, to other black women and in front of Congress. And it was black women who launched campaigns to defend their human rights and dignities. This was sort of a pre-movement. So the Montgomery Bus Boycott was rooted in the campaigns to protect black women.
Q: Which particular story most touched you?
A: They all touched me for different reasons. The story of Recy Taylor (a 24-year-old wife and mother kidnapped and gang-raped after leaving church in Abbeville, Ala., in 1944) moved me because I got to meet her. She's 91 now and lives in Florida.
The story of Betty Jean Owens spoke to me too because she was a student at Florida A&M when a group of white men attacked her. I was a grad student at the time. She was my age when she was assaulted and she had the courage to speak out when she could have been lynched for doing so. That spoke to me about the power of women to fight back and use their voices as a weapon. If she could do that, whatever I was afraid of, I could put aside because she taught me how to be really brave.
Q: What role did Rosa Parks play in the organized resistance to these crimes?
A: Rosa Parks helped launch the campaign to secure justice for Recy Taylor — she signed petitions and sent postcards — and interviewed Taylor and even moved Taylor and her family to Montgomery. Parks helped investigate myriad other cases that the Montgomery NAACP launched campaigns for.
Q: Parks continues to be portrayed as a meek, matronly woman who simply refused to give up her bus seat because she was tired. But, she repeatedly said she was not physically tired; she was tired of the injustices blacks faced on the buses and in life. Why do you think the image of Parks as a tired old woman persists?
A: I think maybe it's because we like our heroes simple. The idea that a simple little seamstress just one day decided to refuse the rules and the walls of segregation came tumbling down is preposterous. But it allows us to worship her instead of emulate her.
No one wants to talk about all the work it takes to be like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X. That's unfortunate because it teaches our children how to worship heroes, but not how to actually be agents for change, and that's a disservice.
Q: What led these crimes to stop?
A: Their testimonies launched campaigns for justice that eventually helped end the wanton abuse of black women. Their pressure led to court hearings — a step forward since initially white men were not tried for these crimes — and ultimately to convictions. The first big, but bittersweet, victory I found was in 1959 when four white men were found "guilty with a recommendation for mercy."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2012950804_webrights23.html?prmid=obinsite