Who was Recy Taylor, the woman Oprah honored in her Golden Globes speech?
Oprah believes we should all know her story
Oprah believes we should all know her story
Oprah believes we should all know her story
In a night filled with politics, emotion and solidarity, the standout moment of the 2018 Golden Globe awards
The famed media mogul became the first black woman to win the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement and brought the house down with a stirring speech.
, in line with the #TimesUp movement which dominated the night, Winfrey paid homage to those who had inspired her throughout her life and career — including women who are, and have, spoken out in the face of sexual abuse and harassment.
But one woman in particular she mentioned — who many may not have heard of — was Recy Taylor. As Winfrey mentioned, Taylor passed away about two weeks before the awards show at the age of 97. She is certainly a woman people should know.
The assault
In 1944 — a time when regions of the U.S., including Alabama where Taylor lived, were racially segregated by law — the 24-year-old mother was walking home from church when she was abducted, blindfolded and gang-raped by six armed white men. She was repeatedly threatened with death, according to reports of the incident, and left on the side of the road.
Despite the threats, Taylor bravely reported the crime to authorities, after which her home and her extended family's homes came under a series of attacks including arson. Some members of law enforcement also encouraged her to keep silent about the crime.
No justice
To help Taylor in her fight for justice, the NAACP sent one of their members to help her. That member was Rosa Parks, a woman who would nearly 10 years later shoot to prominence herself when she refused to obey a bus driver and move from the white-only front section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. From this, she became one of the most high-profile women associated with the civil rights movement.
Even with the support of the NAACP and Parks, the crime committed against Taylor went unpunished. It never even went to trial after two all-white male grand juries refused to indict the men, even though one of them confessed,
A re-emergence into the public eye
After the grand juries' decisions, Taylor moved away from the town of Abbeville and faded out of newspaper headlines.
That was until author Danielle McGuire published a , containing an interview with Taylor. She also met Taylor's brother, Robert Corbitt, who he had been ruthlessly trying to find evidence and get justice unsuccessfully for years.
This led to media interest of the case and a change.org , garnering more than 20,000 signatures, asking for the town of Abbeville to apologize for its "cover up of Jim Crow-era gang rape."
In 2010, Taylor told the Associated Press she wanted an apology from officials as she believed the men who had attacked and raped her had died.
"It would mean a whole lot to me," she said. "The people who done this to me... they can't do no apologizing. Most of them is gone."
In December, 2011 a from the Alabama Legislature for its "morally abhorrent and repugnant" failure to act in prosecuting the crime came.
"I was proud to hear that they [apologized]. But I can't explain just how I feel right now," Taylor told shortly afterwards. "I find myself getting nervous talking about it too much because it gets me disturbed thinking about what happened. But I felt good over the apology."
In 2017, a documentary called The Rape of Recy Taylor was released, unexpectedly against the backdrop of the wave of women speaking out against rape and sexual harassment as part of the #MeToo movement. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival and Taylor's brother Corbitt attended.
Final years
Taylor died in her sleep at her nursing home in Abbeville, just three weeks after the release of the documentary, according to She had moved back there from Florida to be nearer to family as her health deteriorated, the reports.
She will be remembered, even more so now thanks to Winfrey, for her bravery in reporting the abhorrent crime and for speaking up when times were even more difficult than they are now.