Today In Black History: Remembering Recy Taylor
Gang Rape Victim and Civil Rights Icon
Issue #914 Today In Black History, Monday, August 25, 2025
Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old wife, mother, and sharecropper, was born on December 31, 1919, in Abbeville, Alabama. On September 3, 1944, as she was walking home from church, she was abducted and brutally raped by six white men.
Mrs. Taylor relayed the incident to her father, her husband, and the sheriff, and the six teenagers, five of whom did the actual repeated rapes, were arrested. Later, the Taylor home was firebombed, and the sheriff and others made false claims that Taylor had previously been jailed, was a prostitute who asked for sex, and had venereal diseases.
Despite the confessions and with two all-white and all-male grand jury investigations that did not even include a lineup for Mrs. Taylor to identify her attackers, there were no indictments for the perpetrators. The Taylors and their daughter had to move in with her father, who sat up all night with a rifle to protect them, and then slept during the day.
The Montgomery, Alabama, branch of the NAACP sent its investigator, Rosa Parks, to Abbeville to advocate for Taylor. Parks and other activists formed the "Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor," which launched a nationwide campaign to bring her attackers to justice. The campaign gained significant traction, attracting widespread media attention and sparking protests.
Meanwhile, the violence against African Americans continued, including against African American military personnel just returning from fighting for the United States in World War II. Black women were raped and Black men were lynched following unfounded accusations of crimes.
Rosa Parks and other primarily female activists helped spread Recy Taylor's story all the way up the coast to Harlem, New York. Stories of Taylor's assault were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier, making the "rape of Recy Taylor a southern injustice" which "immediately sparked nationwide interest." This led to a publication in the New York Daily News titled "Alabama Authorities Ignore White Gang's Rape of Negro Mother" and attacked the long-lasting segregation and defense of white womanhood as well as the "manipulation of interracial rape to justify violence against black men."
Several years later, on December 1, 1955, civil rights investigator Rosa Parks was selected by the Montgomery NAACP to deliberately sit]]tay seated in the white section of a public bus, setting off the year-long Montgomery Bus boycott, which, along with the murder of 14-year-old Emmitt Till, was one of the primary foundations for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Recy Taylor and her family eventually moved to Florida, where she got work picking oranges. Her daughter died in 1967 due to an automobile accident.
In 2010, historian Danielle L. McGuire published a book, 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.
Finally, in 2011, the Alabama legislature formally apologized to Taylor for not offering justice and failing to properly prosecute the crimes against her.
In 2017, director Nancy Buirski made a documentary called The Rape of Recy Taylor, containing interviews with Recy Taylor, her brother and sister, and family members of the accused rapists.
Recy Taylor stayed in Florida until her health declined, when relatives moved her back to Abbeville, where she died on December 28, 2017, just days before her 98th birthday.
On January 5, 2018, Alabama Representative Terri Sewell spoke to Congress about Recy Taylor’s life and legacy.
During the 2018 Golden Globe Awards ceremony, Oprah Winfrey reminded the world of what Taylor and her family had gone through, saying, “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.”
Today In Black History
In 1802, Haitian Revolutionary General Toussaint L’Ouverture was imprisoned in Fort de Joux, in Jura, France.
In 1862, the Secretary of War authorized General Rufus Saxton to arm up to five thousand slaves.
In 1886, more than 600 delegates organized the American Baptist Convention in St. Louis, electing Rev. William J. Simmons as its first president.
In 1886, Kentucky State College was founded.
In 1908, the National Association of Colored Nurses formed in New York City, electing Martha Minerva Franklin as president.
In 1925, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which became one of the most successful union organizing efforts in history, was organized in Harlem, electing A. Philip Randolph as president.
In 1952, Puerto Rico became a U.S. Commonwealth.
In 1965, James Madison Nabrit, Jr. was named Ambassador to the United Nations.
In 1967, FBI documents revealed that the federal government mounted an intensive campaign against civil rights organizations in the 1960s. The FBI said the government operation, called COINTELPRO, was designed "to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize the activities of Black nationalists, hate-type groups, their leadership, spokesmen, membership and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorders." The FBI later specifically named the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as organizations having "radical and violence prone leaders, members and followers."
In 1968, Arthur Ashe won the U.S. Amateur Men’s Singles Championship.
In 2017, Donald Trump granted a presidential pardon to Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had been convicted of contempt of court for racial profiling.
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Shameful! They Hate us but they have always lusted for our Women and our Men Then treated us like animals! God forgive them because they still hate us!NO matter what they do to us We Rise Up! That’s Who We Are That’s how We’re Fearfully and Wonderfully Made!!!