Between the Street and the State

Between the Street and the State examines how Black anti-rape organizers critically engaged both the feminist movement against sexual violence and the federal War on Crime between 1974 and 1994.

In Philadelphia, Washington, DC, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, and Atlanta, activists inflected Black women’s longstanding tradition of community-based caring labor with the Black feminist condemnation of patriarchal and state violence.

Their multifaceted and adaptable brand of anti-rape advocacy was premised on sustaining the survival of Black women and girls individually and Black communities more broadly.

In this way, Black anti-rape activists countered the growing emphasis within the feminist movement on controlling rape through carceral collaborations.

They acted subversively, redirecting state funds and state-funded research premised on rape control to projects that offered care to Black victims.