Written by Paris Wu
As final preparations are being made for Ithaca’s 46th Take Back the Night, we thought it would be worthwhile to understand this event’s history. This blog was researched and written by Paris Wu, volunteer and Cornell student.
Please note, this blog discusses topics related to domestic violence, sexual abuse, and death.
As early as the 19th century, the streets were perceived as a location of permissible violence, especially at night. Those who were out walking at night in public would be stigmatized with immorality, which became a cultural excuse to deny them social and legal justice when assaults like rapes occurred. As a result, people from different backgrounds protested for their rights to street mobility and safety. In 1840, for example, streetwalkers of Waterloo Road, London, England collectively used rough music and hot pokers to retaliate against policemen that were sexually harassing any women on Waterloo Road.
Violence against women and violence on the streets is not particular to Waterloo Road, but rather an international personal and political issue, as discussed in the first International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women at the Palais des Congrès, on March 4, 1976. Similar tribunals were held in the United States for women who cannot afford traveling to Europe. In February 1976, the New York Tribunal on Crimes Against Women, sponsored by groups including New York National Organization of Women and Sisterhood of Black Single Mothers, was held. Through personal testimonies, women of different ages and national backgrounds denounced crimes against women, including: forced motherhood, medical abuse, economic oppression, legal discrimination, and violence against women. Violence against women was characterized with an overarching sexual element, for example: rape, molestation of female children, brutalization of women in pornography and prostitution. While some sources claim that a street demonstration prototyping Take Back the Night march occurred in Belgium along with the Tribunal, one of its key instigator Dr. Diana Russell personally debunks the myth, stating that one of the first Take Back the Night (also known as Reclaim the Night) march she participated was in 1977, San Francisco.
Indeed, 1977 saw the first Take Back the Night movements internationally, especially in the United States. In response to the gendered violence many individuals face, grass-roots organizations appeared all over the country, sponsoring and leading Take Back the Night marches in places like Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and New York. In 1978, different women’s rights organizations began forming coalitions to host Take Back the Night marches together. Although these marches occurred in different states at different times, they were generally characterized by rallies, music, the popular slogan “Women Unite, Take Back the Night,” waving flashlights, and loud noises by whistles or drums, such as the April 29 D.C. TBTN and August 26 Boston TBTN. Demands of these Take Back the Night marches included domestic violence shelters, free medical treatment for sexual assault survivors, improving public infrastructure, changing rape laws, and decriminalizing prostitution.
Take Back the Night marches were also a part of a larger feminist anti-pornography movement of the 1970s. Many women’s organizations mobilized Take Back the Night marches to protest pornography as a larger part of gendered violence. The most prolific march is arguably the November 18, 1978 San Francisco TBTN, dubbed as the United States’ first national TBTN march. The march aimed to demonstrate people’s desire to “reclaim the streets from rapists, sexual harassers, and pornographers” so that streets could be ventured free from the constant fear of assault. Chanting “Women Unite, Take Back the Night,” 3000 people holding candles, flashlights, torches, and banners marched through the red-light districts of Broadway, Kearney Street, and Columbus Avenue. On a stage set up on one side of the street, Holly Near sang her song “Take Back the Night.”
As the 1970s passed into the 1980s, Holly Near’s music as well as feminist demands for reproductive rights, support systems, and change in attitudes towards gendered violence continue to be prevalent in Take Back the Night marches. There has been a small but overarching change in TBTN’s rituals and nature across the country: since 1979, the march’s understanding of empowerment shifted from demonstrating rage and physical strength to sharing experiences of survivorship and commemorating victims to bond as a community. Take Back the Night marches would typically end with people speaking of journey of healing, honoring victims in silent meditation, a commemorative candlelight ceremony to all rape and battery victims, a period of silence, or a eulogy for victims of “institutional violence including toxic shock and infant formula starvation.” These commemorative rituals often involving observation of silences and candles are still present in 21st century Take Back the Night events, including the New York Tompkins County’s Advocacy Center’s April 26, 2024 TBTN.
Although Take Back the Night march was virtually exclusive to women-identifying participants in the late 20th century, continuous activism, research and debate since its first 1977 organization in the United States has developed TBTN as an inclusive event that embraces survivors and supporters of all gender identities and from all backgrounds. Beginning from the 1980s, Take Back the Night organizers began to take a more intersectional approach against systematic violence and oppression, as they come to realize the connections between sexism and other forms of discrimination, such as ableism, racism, homophobia, and colonialism. Today’s Take Back the Night marches’ inclusivity are not only reflected in their increasingly diverse participants, and multilingual opening speeches, but its slogan being “People Unite, Take Back the Night” instead of “Women Unite, Take Back the Night.”
In Ithaca’s 46th Annual Take Back the on April 25, 2025, The Advocacy Center will carry on the tradition of TBTN with a march, rally, speak-out, and vigil to unite the community to support survivors and envision an end to sexual assault, domestic violence, rape, and child sexual abuse. We seek to empower and uplift survivors and prioritize underrepresented and marginalized voices in their stories and in our collective liberation.
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