“The Laws Have Hurt Me” Violence, Violation, and Black Women’s Struggles for Civil Rights

Black women bore scars of the routine violence that plagued them in the Jim Crow South from girlhood on. Their encounters with state and sexual violence shaped their resistance to white supremacy and the very ways they thought about nonviolence and self-defense. Drawing on works in black women’s and civil rights history, this essay foregrounds women well-known and lesser-known—from North Carolinian Mabel Williams to Mississippi café-owner Henrietta Wright—to explore how their vision of activism emerged from both black political tradition and everyday experience. This history offers context and guide to contemporary Black women activists who continue to challenge state violence as it has evolved and mutated.