In the 1940s, Taylor's bravery in speaking out about her rape by white men led to organizing in the African-American community for justice and civil rights.
Taylor's rape, refusal to remain silent, and the subsequent court cases were among the early instances of nationwide protest and activism among the African-American community and ended up providing an organizational spark in the civil rights movement.
The assailants ignored her requests, all removed their clothes, and watched as Lovett ordered Taylor to lie down and for her to "act just like you do with your husband or I'll cut your damn throat.
Daniel identified the car as belonging to Hugo Wilson, who admitted to picking up Taylor and, as he put it, "carrying her to the spot" and pinned the rape on six men, Dillard York, Billy Howerton, Herbert Lovett, Luther Lee, Joe Culpepper, and Robert Gamble.
[2]: 8 The black community of Abbeville was outraged at the actions taken by the police, and the event was reported to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter in Montgomery, Alabama.
[9] In early October, the Chicago Defender, which had a national African-American audience, ran a front-page article titled "Victim of White Alabama Rapists", which profiled Taylor and the case.
Parks and her allies formed the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice for Taylor, "with support from national labor unions, African-American organizations, and women's groups."
The group recruited supporters across the entire country and by the spring of 1945 they had organized what the Chicago Defender called the "strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade.
SNYC members, together with Rosa Parks and other primarily female activists helped spread Recy Taylor's story all the way up the coast to Harlem, New York.
"[2]: 17 After various other newspaper publications and widespread knowledge of the attack, black activists started writing to the Governor of Alabama, Chauncey Sparks.
Du Bois; Mary Church Terrell, a suffragist and founder of the National Association of Colored Women; Charlotte Hawkins Brown, a popular clubwoman and respected educator; Ira De A. Reid, a sociologist and assistant director of the newly formed Southern Regional Council; John Sengstacke, the publisher of the Chicago Defender; Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes of Harlem Renaissance fame; Lillian Smith, author of the controversial interracial love story Strange Fruit; and Broadway impresario Oscar Hammerstein II."
He also claimed that he had arrested all of the men involved in the rape two days after the assault, and that he had placed Hugo Wilson, the man identified as being the owner of the car, under a $500 bond.
He also accused Taylor of being "nothing but a whore around Abbeville" and that she had been "treated for some time by the Health Officer of Henry County for venereal disease."
Later, other white men from Abbeville identified Taylor as an "upstanding, respectable woman who abided by the town's racial and sexual mores".
However, even with this information including several of the alleged assailants testimonies, the attorney general "failed to convince the jurors of Henry County that there was enough evidence to indict the seven suspects when he presented Taylor's case on February 14, 1945.
Taylor lived for many years in Winter Haven, Florida, until her family brought her back to Abbeville, due to failing health.
[13]State Representative Dexter Grimsley, along with Abbeville Mayor Ryan Blalock and Henry County Probate Judge JoAnn Smith, also apologized to Taylor for her treatment.
[15][16] A 2017 documentary by Nancy Buirski, The Rape of Recy Taylor, premiered at the Venice Biennale and the New York Film Festival, and was screened across the U.S. in 2018.
[17][18][19][20] The film, which won the Venice Biennale's Human Rights Night Award,[21][22] focused on Taylor and her family recounting their struggle for justice, and sought to expose a context of systemic racism that fostered the crime and coverup, and persists today.