At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire

Taylor survived the horrific attack and immediately tried to find her way home. She was then dumped out of the car on the side of the highway. The men proceeded to blindfold her and six of them brutally raped her. She begged to be returned home to her husband and daughter, but the men threatened to kill her and leave her in the woods. Only 24-years-old at the time, Taylor was abducted by the men and taken to the woods. When they did not stop, the man pointed a shotgun at them and forced Taylor to get into the car at gunpoint. All armed with guns and knives, one of the men ordered Taylor and her friends to stop walking. The green Chevrolet eventually stopped beside them with seven young white men inside. On Septemhowever, Taylor decided to attend a special evening service at Rock Hill Holiness Church with her friend Fannie Daniels and her son West Daniels.Īs the group walked home from church together, they noticed the same car kept passing by them several times. At night, Taylor could sometimes be found sewing or sitting on the porch with her husband.

When their daughter was old enough to be taken care of by friends, Recy Taylor would go to work during the day. The small family lived in a rented sharecropper’s cabin in the ‘colored section’ of segregated Abbeville, Alabama. As a young woman, she married Willie Guy Taylor and in 1941, the couple welcomed their daughter Joyce Lee. When she was 17 years old, her mother died and she was left to take care of her six younger siblings. She grew up in Abbeville, Alabama to a sharecropping family. Recy Taylor was born as Recy Corbitt on December 31, 1919.

Decades later, her story has been told in both a book and a documentary film. She bravely testified against the group of white men that kidnapped and raped her. Although it was very dangerous for African Americans to speak out against white people during the Jim Crow era, Recy Taylor refused to remain silent about sexual violence.

At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire