The Rape of Recy Taylor
One of the reasons that I love my husband so much is because he truly listens to me. He actively participates in other aspects of my life without being a vocal participant. Bobby has been very supportive of everything I do, both publicly and privately. Although he isn’t listed as an admin on End of the Innocence Project, he really is. He doesn’t like to be in the spotlight, he doesn’t like to stand out. He does have a need to be heard and understood. Many times, he speaks through me. I see it as an honor to speak on his behalf. This blogpost was his idea.
We pay for a small group of movie channels each month through our cable service. My husband loves old movies. He used to watch black and whites and westerns with his folks when he was growing up. He speaks fondly of the memories to this day.
Bobby took the time to record a documentary on a Starz channel that focuses on, and highlights, African Americans. The movie was called “The Rape of Recy Taylor.” He recorded it for me because of the work I do with the End of the Innocence. He knows that I often research certain topics and headlines for the Facebook group, our biweekly conference calls, and my blogs. He didn’t tell me what he was doing, or why he was doing it. He just did it.
One night last month I came across the recording on our DVR and pushed play while we were having dinner, more out of curiosity than anything else. Bobby said very nonchalantly, “I recorded this so that you could talk about it in your group and maybe blog about it.” (God I love this man.) How often do we find people in our lives that so totally get us, and actively support our passions???
For more information on the documentary, click here: https://www.therapeofrecytaylor.com/
Recy Taylor was born in a small town in the deep southern state of Alabama, in the small city of Abbeville, on December 31, 1919. She died on December 28, 2017, three days shy of her 98th birthday.
Her family were sharecroppers in a time where the color of your skin determined the level of basic humanity you were treated with. Recy had both the blessing and curse of being born African American. I say blessing, because life is always a blessing and this woman persevered under the toughest of circumstances. I say curse because being born with dark skin, in the Jim Crow Era, meant that you were treated differently than those born with light skin in the same era.
Just in case you are not familiar with what the Jim Crow south is, I have provided a link for your education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
Even today in our current society, politically and economically, the color of our skin can determine how we are treated, respectfully or not. Being the mother of two “mixed” children, I try to pay attention to these things. My two youngest are a mix of Mexican, American Indian, and me. I myself am a Heinz 57 girl, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a whole lot of compassion, and doing my best to understand all sides.
Back to Recy. This woman, a married mother of a young daughter, was kidnapped and gang raped by a group of 6-7 local boys on September 3, 1944, on her way home from a church service.
All six known attackers were teenagers. All six rapists were white, their victim was black. They had weapons. She was held at gunpoint. They threatened to kill her if she spoke a word about what happened.
After being so brutally raped that she could never have another child, Recy was blindfolded and left on the side of a lonely country road.
There were no cell phones, there was no 911.
Slowly, she made her way home. Her father had heard about the assault from a girlfriend that was with her at the time she was grabbed. He drove around looking for her and found her stumbling up the road. Despite the threat of death, she told her father what happened. She told her husband what happened. The assault was reported to the police by both Recy and her friend.
What happened next? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Society sat on their hands and the world kept spinning. In a very short time, the event made national headlines. Still, nothing happened. The boys admitted their guilt to the police, one of them going so far as to say that they paid her for sex. Yet again, nothing happened.
Rosa Parks came to Abbeville and spoke with Recy, campaigning for justice. She was shooed away by the local lawman, threatened with being locked up if she didn’t leave willingly. He didn’t want any “trouble makers” in his town. Rosa was used to this kind of treatment and left peacefully.
Rosa Parks was a hero activist, not a troublemaker, see here for more information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks
About a month after the rape, Recy’s family was offered money to “forget” what happened, the boys were willing to pay $100 each to buy her silence. If you are so inclined, you can click the link below and see the pdf files of the materials related to the case.
http://digital.archives.alabama.gov/cdm/compoundobject/collection/voices/id/8041/rec/1
Unfortunately this is an all too familiar scenario today. Lawmen looking out only for themselves and their “stellar” reputations, some of them even being the perpetrator, while the accused offer up sums of cash or special favors to the victims to stay silent and not make a fuss. (We even saw a case of this here in Arizona recently with the female teacher that raped her student, and her husband, “encouraging” the victim’s parents to drop it and not go to the police.)
After the first grand jury refused to indict the boys, Rosa Parks urged community members to start a letter writing campaign of outrage, demanding response, to the Alabama legislature. Parks sent her own letter as a resident of the state.
Recy’s family was singled out with violence and intimidation, there were death threats against her. Her house was firebombed by alleged white supremecists. She, her husband and child, had to move back to the family home, where her father kept vigil with a shotgun, all night, every night, to protect his kin.
On Valentine’s Day 1945, a second Grand Jury declined to indict the boys that raped her.
Two different jurys had turned a blind eye to what happened, the boys were never charged, despite their own confessions. One of these confessions mirrored nearly exactly what Recy stated had happened, yet it wasn’t enough. Newspapers wrote stories, activists had marches. The boys went on to lead relatively normal lives.
A decade later in 1955 Rosa Parks stood her ground in the civil rights movement on the infamous bus in Montgomery Alabama. Although she made a huge mark in our memories, and contributed to a huge part of US history, she died in 2005, never seeing the results of her actions in Recy Taylor’s case.
It wasn’t until 2011, 67 years after the brutal rape, that Recy finally received an apology from the Alabama State legislature for their failure to prosecute her attackers. They use the words “morally abhorrent and repugnant” in the description of their own failure to act.
Recy died peacefully in her sleep 6 years later, in a rest home in Abbeville, back where it all began. She lived as a humble peaceful woman, despite what she went through at the age of 24.
I try to never incite violence or hatred in anything that I say, do, or represent. I only bring this one case to the forefront today because before I saw the movie, I never knew anything about it. I like to think that I pay attention and I admittedly seek out stories like this to keep myself educated and informed.
This isn’t a black thing, white thing, or a race thing. This is a human issue. This story is about the rape of a girl, that went unpunished, unrecognized, and unacknowledged for decades.
Is it any wonder why more women don’t report?