Gang-raped by six white men who never faced justice, woman who inspired Oprah’s ‘presidential’ awards speech
gang was hauled in. But they said the was consensual for cash and were wed home. The next day, white antes set fire to Recy’s porch. ecy, her husband, and three-year-old ghter, Joyce, moved in with her er and siblings. Her dad kept watch tree outside with a gun. eputy sheriff Lewey Corbitt shared maiden name. His ancestors had ed hers as slaves. e and his team, however, were to do to bring her rapists to justice. he National Association for the ancement of Colored People became lved and sent a young investigator he name of Rosa Parks to Recy’s aid. osa would go on to refuse to give up bus seat to a white passenger in 1955 ne of the defining moments of the rights movement. Although the case she was sent to probe did make it to court, this was nothing but a gesture.
When the grand jury met, Recy’s relatives were the only witnesses. None of her attackers had been arrested. The jury convicted no one.
A storm ensued, led by campaigners, and another jury was called. Even though one of the men did finally back Recy’s story, the jury refused to convict.
Aisha says: “Recy told me she’d been offered $100 dollars for each man to forget about it, to drop it. She always said she couldn’t leave it. She never took the money.”
Her attackers, now all believed dead, carried on with their lives but she and her family always lived with the trauma. Sheriff Corbitt told her to leave town. “I don’t want any troublemakers here,” he said. “If you don’t go, I’ll lock you up.” She moved to Florida, worked as an orange picker and later separated from her husband.
Her attack had been so violent, she was left unable to have more children.
She lost her daughter in a car accident, but raised great-grandaughter Aisha, who recalls the trauma that persisted.
“She would be upset with me if I was out late walking. She always had a nervousness and she was anxious,
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things would wake her up, make her worry,” Aisha explains.
It took until 2008 for Recy’s story to begin to surface again, when historian and author Danielle Mcguire uncovered paperwork proving the authorities’ wrongdoing in the case.
Danielle contacted the family, and it was only then Aisha found out the truth. Most upsetting to hear was the shame Recy still felt. “She told me she had felt ashamed no one believed her. She was a Christian woman, but they said she had done it for money, that she’d been drinking,” says Aisha, of Tampa, Florida.
Thanks to Danielle’s research, and a campaign led by Recy’s brother Robert Corbitt, she was offered a formal apology by the Alabama Legislature in 2011. But Recy never got her justice. Speaking then, she said: “The people who done this to me... they can’t do no apologising. Most of them is gone.”
In the end her strength prevailed. “She never treated anyone any different,” Aisha says. “Regardless of race or colour, she welcomed people. She loved people.”
She says it was a comfort at the end that her story was on people’s lips again.
Oprah concluded: “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.”
The girls she will inspire to speak out prove her bravery was not in vain.
■ At The Dark End Of The Street – Black Women, Rape, and Resistance by Danielle L Mcguire, includes Recy’s story.
She lived in a culture broken by brutally powerful men
OPRAH WINFREY