hooks writes about historical events that she lived through, from her birth in 1952 until the publication of Killing Rage: Ending Racism in 1995. One of these events was desegregation, which began federally across the US in 1954 but took time to implement in Appalachia, where hooks was born and raised. When hooks began her education, it was in a segregated, all-Black school. hooks was witness to the political turmoil surrounding the desegregation of public schools in Kentucky. This era includes the famous events in the cities of Sturgis and Clay, where the National Guard and police had to enforce the desegregation of schools in 1956. hooks frequently describes the change from being in all-Black communities to being in racially integrated communities. For instance, hooks writes: “Once black folks became able to establish bonds of attachment and intimacy to white folks, the structures of black intimacy were altered” (242). Black identity and relationships changed, hooks argues, when Black people began to enter formerly only white spaces.

Black identity was fundamentally changed by the civil rights movement and the Black power movement, which began in the 1960s. This included actions by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panthers, and the Nation of Islam.