Recy Taylor: Who Was the Woman Hailed by Oprah Winfrey?

Recy Taylor, who was hailed by Oprah Winfrey during her speech at the Golden Globes Sunday, was reportedly raped by six men in Alabama in 1944, and her efforts for justice helped spark the Civil Rights Movement, wrote People magazine.

Taylor died in December at 97 and her story was published in the 2010 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," the magazine said.

That recounting, where two grand juries declined to indict the men accused of the rape, led the Alabama state legislature to apologize in 2011, People said. The legislature called the decision not to prosecute her assailants "morally abhorrent and repugnant," People wrote.

"This is such an important time in this country's path to recognize Recy Taylor," documentary director Nancy Buirski, told The Guardian in December. "With women being singled out on Time magazine's cover, as part of the #MeToo campaign, I really want to draw attention to the black women who spoke up when their lives were seriously in danger."

Taylor's effort to find justice was supported by Rosa Parks before she became a civil rights icon. Then a well-known NAACP activist, Parks went to Taylor's home in Abbeville, Alabama, to organize on Taylor's behalf and raise her profile, The Guardian reported.

"If you look at the list of people who ultimately supported the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs Recy Taylor, it was celebrities and entertainers and people who had a certain power to communicate, and that finally had a corrective impact," Buirski told The Guardian of Parks' efforts. "It takes a powerful group of people to draw attention the people who didn't have power."

Taylor was 24 when six white men reportedly kidnapped Taylor at gunpoint as she walked home from church, blindfolded her and raped her, The Guardian wrote.

Taylor's porch was set on fire after she took her case to authorities forcing her and her husband to flee their home. Two grand juries failed to indict the men, some who said they paid to have sex with Taylor and her marriage eventually broke up, People magazine said.

The case, though, received widespread coverage in the African-American press, bringing famous black activists like W.E.B. DuBois and Mary Church Terre to Taylor's cause, People said.

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