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Oprah Winfrey shared Recy Taylor’s story in her Golden Globes speech that left majority of America wanting her to run for President, and on Tuesday the media mogul visited her grave in Alabama.
Fate would have it, that Oprah Winfrey would be on assignment for 60 Minutes in Abbeville, Alabama, the same place Recy Taylor lived and died peacefully in a nursing home.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, but if I did, this would be a powerful one. On assignment for @60minutes I end up in the town of Abbeville where #RecyTaylor suffered injustice, endured and recently died,” Oprah shared on Instagram.
On Sept. 3rd, 1944, 24 year old, Recy Taylor was walking home from Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama, when six white men abducted and raped her. They forced Taylor into a green Chevrolet, blindfolded her and forced her to remove her clothes. The group’s leader Herbert Lovett instructed her to “act just like you do with your husband or I’ll cut your damn throat” before he and five other men raped her in the car.
After Taylor was tossed out of the car, the county sheriff arrived and though Taylor couldn’t identify her assailants, her description of the car matched that of one of her rapists. That man then identified the other assailants, though he insisted the men paid Taylor and did not rape her. The next day white vigilantes set her porch on fire, forcing Taylor, her husband, Willie Guy Taylor, and their 3-year-old daughter Joyce Lee to move in with Taylor’s father. The NAACP sent Rosa Parks, then a young activist, to investigate the case.
Rosa Parks helped organize a nationwide campaign and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice for Taylor.
“Together, they sought justice,” Winfrey said in her Globes speech. “But justice wasn’t an option in the era of Jim Crow.” Winfrey then drew parallels to what happened to Recy Taylor to what is happening with women today. “She lived, as we all have lived, too many in a culture broken by brutally powerful men,” Winfrey said. “For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak the truth to the power of those men.” “But their time is up,” Winfrey said to a standing ovation. Taylor’s abductors were never prosecuted. Recy Taylor died at the age of 97, on December 28th, 2017
