Take Back the Night (protest)

Take Back the Night is an international event and non-profit organization with the mission of ending sexual, relationship, and domestic violence in all forms. Hundreds of events are held in over 30 countries annually. Events often include marches, rallies and vigils intended as a protest and direct action against rape and other forms of sexual, relationship and domestic violence. In 2001, a group of women who had participated in the earliest Take Back the Night marches, came together to form the Take Back the Night Foundation in support of the events throughout the United States and the world.

Take Back the Night Foundation's Board members have participated in Take Back the Night marches and events from the 1970s to present day. Early Take Back the Night events include a protest in San Francisco against pornography in 1978. One of the first "Take Back the Night" marches was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in October 1975, after the murder of a microbiologist, Susan Alexander Speeth, who was stabbed to death while walking home alone.

"Take Back the Night" was used as the title of a 1977 memorial read by Anne Pride at an anti-violence rally in Pittsburgh.

A "Reclaim the Night" march was held in Belgium in March 1976 by the women attending the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women. They marched together holding candles to protest violence against women. Other marches were held in Rome in 1976 as a reaction to recently released rape statistics, in West Germany in 1977 demanding "the right to move freely in their communities at day and night without harassment and sexual assault", and in 11 towns in England later in 1977 in response to the "Yorkshire Ripper" murders, organised by the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group.

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