In a night filled with politics, emotion and solidarity, the standout moment of the 2018 Golden Globe awards belonged to Oprah Winfrey.

The famed talk show host/entrepreneur/actress/business magnate/philanthropist (you name it) became the first black woman to win the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement and brought the house down with a stirring speech.

Wearing all-black, in line with the #TimesUp movement which dominated the night, Winfrey paid homage to those who had inspired her throughout her life and career - including women who are, and have, spoken out in the face of sexual abuse and harassment.

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But one woman in particular she mentioned - who few may have heard of - was Recy Taylor.

As Winfrey mentioned, Taylor passed away a little under two weeks ago at the age of 97 and is a woman people should definitely know.

Th assault

In 1944 - a time when regions of the US, including the state of Alabama where Taylor lived, were racially segregated by law - 24-year-old mother Taylor was walking home from church when she was abducted, blindfolded and gang-raped by six armed white men. She was repeatedly threatened with death, according to reports of the incident, and left on the side of the road.

Despite the threats, Taylor bravely reported the crime to authorities, after which her home and her extended family's homes came under a series of attacks including arson. Some members of law enforcement also reportedly encouraged her to keep silent about the crime.

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Youtube/Wide House

No justice

To help Taylor in her fight for justice, one of the biggest civil rights organisations, the NAACP, sent one of their members to help her. That member was Rosa Parks, a woman who almost 10 years later shot to prominence herself when she refused to obey a bus driver and move from the white-only front section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. From this, she became one of the most high-profile women associated with the civil rights movement.

Even with the support of the NAACP and Parks, the crime committed against Taylor went unpunished. It never even went to trial after two all-white male grand juries refused to indict the men, even though one of them confessed, the New York Times reports.

A re-emergence into the public eye

After the grand juries' decisions, Taylor moved away from the town of Abbeville and faded out of newspaper headlines.

That was until an author Danielle McGuire published a book on the crime in 2010, containing an interview with Taylor. She also met Taylor's brother Robert Corbitt, who told the author he had been ruthlessly trying to find evidence and get justice unsuccessfully for years.

This led to media interest of the case and a change.org petition, garnering more than 20,000 signatures, asking for the town of Abbeville to apologise for its 'cover up of Jim Crow-era gang rape'.

In 2010, Taylor told the Associated Press she wanted an apology from officials as she believed the men who had attacked and raped her had died.

'It would mean a whole lot to me,' she said. 'The people who done this to me,... they can't do no apologising. Most of them is gone.'

In December, 2011 a formal apology from the Alabama Legislature for its 'morally abhorrent and repugnant' failure to act in prosecuting the crime came.

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'I was proud to hear that they [apologised]. But I can't explain just how I feel right now,' Taylor told The Root shortly afterwards. 'I find myself getting nervous talking about it too much because it gets me disturbed thinking about what happened. But I felt good over the apology.'

In 2017, a documentary The Rape of Recy Taylor was released, unexpectedly against the backdrop of the wave of women speaking out against rape and sexual harassment as part of the #MeToo movement. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival and Taylor's brother Corbitt attended.

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Getty Images

Final years

Taylor died just three weeks after the US release of the documentary in her sleep at a nursing room in Abbeville, according to The Guardian. She had moved back there from Florida to be nearer to family as her health deteriorated, the New York Times reports.

She will be remembered, even more so now thanks to Winfrey, for her bravery in reporting the abhorrent crime and for speaking up when times were even more difficult than they are now.

Lettermark
Olivia Blair
Olivia Blair is Talent Editor at Hearst UK, working predominantly across Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. Olivia covers all things entertainment and has interviewed the likes of Margot Robbie, Emma Stone, Timothée Chalamet and Cynthia Erivo over the years.