On Recy Taylor's way home from church one night in Abbeville, Ala., a group of white men accosted her on the street. They forced the 24-year-old wife and mother into their truck and six of them took turns raping her.
This was in 1944 and _ despite admissions of guilt, a trial, help from NAACP investigator Rosa Parks and fruitless consideration of the case by a grand jury _ the assailants were never brought to justice.
In 2011, with the assailants all dead, the state of Alabama issued an apology to Taylor for not prosecuting her attackers. She was 91 years old. On Dec. 28 of last year, Taylor died in the same Alabama town where she had been raped.
Onstage Sunday night at the Golden Globes, Oprah Winfrey said Taylor's name and educated the audience on her story. Backstage, with her Cecil B. DeMille Award in hand, she explained why she decided to do so.
"[To show] it's been happening for a very long time, when people didn't feel like they could speak up," she said.
Draped in black, in solidarity with the Time's Up movement, Winfrey noted that shortly after the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, which led to an important discussion of sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood, she thought, "Here is an opportunity for powerful growth.
"How do we use this moment to elevate what is happening instead of continually victimizing ourselves?" she said. "Now that we've all joined as one voice, it feels like empowerment to women who never had it."
Taylor's story was just one high point in Winfrey's bold speech, which rallied her admirers.
