Recy Taylor, Civil Rights Symbol, Gets Oprah Shoutout At Globes

ABBEVILLE, AL – A black woman from Alabama whose rape by six white men more than 70 years ago in Alabama gained national attention, received a shoutout from Oprah Winfrey Sunday night at the Golden Globe Awards.

"In 1944, Recy Taylor was a young wife and mother walking home from a church service she'd attended in Abbeville, Alabama, when she was abducted by six armed white men, raped, and left blindfolded by the side of the road coming home from church," Oprah said.

"They threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone."

Taylor died December 28. She was 97-years-old.

"I just hope that Recy Taylor died knowing that her truth, like the truth of so many other women who were tormented in those years, and even now tormented, goes marching on," Oprah said.

Recy Taylor was 24-years years-old the night of September 3, 1944 when she was abducted as she walked home from services at the Rock Hill Holiness Church. They then proceeded to sexually assault her.

While Taylor filed a complaint with the police and several of the men confessed to the attack, no one was ever charged with the crime.

Two grand juries, which were all-white and all-male, chose not to indict anyone in the case.

Some of the men had said that while they had had sex with her, she had agreed to the sex and that they had paid for her.

The incident received national attention and the NAACP sent an investigator to look into the case.

That investigator was Rosa Parks.

While Taylor did not receive justice, her case provided a spark that helped galvanize what would become the civil rights movement.

She would speak publicly of the attack over the years and urge people not to be silent.

In 2010, her story received new interest when historian Danielle McGuire published, "At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance – a New History of the Civil Rights Movement From Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power."

The book led to the Alabama legislature passing a resolution apologizing for the attack and aftermath.

It also led to an invitation to tour the White House. While she did not get to meet President or Michelle Obama, she called the visit "beautiful."

Taylor died just weeks after the release of a documentary about her attack, "The Rape of Recy Taylor."

Oprah said that Recy's attack " was somewhere in Rosa Parks' heart almost 11 years later, when she made the decision to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery, and it's here with every woman who chooses to say, "Me too."

"And every man—every man who chooses to listen."

Taylor is survived by a granddaughter, several great-grand-children, and two sisters.

Photo of Taylor after touring the White House via Susan WalshAP Photo.