Recy Taylor's Truth

Oprah Winfrey’s rousing speech at the Golden Globes on Sunday garnered headlines for catapulting the media mogul into the ranks of possible presidential candidates, but it was perhaps most remarkable for a moment in which she reframed the #MeToo moment and challenged even some people in the room who stood with her in solidarity. In a call to arms against sexual violence and for gender equality, Winfrey invoked the story of Recy Taylor, a black woman from Abbeville, Alabama, who—in 1944, at the height of Jim Crow—was kidnapped and raped by six white men.

As Oprah told the audience: “Recy Taylor died 10 days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.”

Just who was Recy Taylor, and what was the movement for justice for her like? To help answer those questions, I spoke to historian Danielle L. McGuire, whose scholarship and 2011 book At the Dark End of the Street: helped retrieve Taylor’s case from the obscurity, spurred the creation of a 2017 documentary, and helped finally move the Alabama state legislature to formally apologize to Taylor in 2011. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.