Oprah Winfrey paid tribute to a little-known victim of a vicious racist attack in her speech at the Golden Globes Sunday.
In 1944, Recy Taylor, an African American woman, was walking home from church when she was abducted and raped by a group of white men.
Taylor's case would become the springboard for the civil rights movement. She died just a few days before Oprah accepted the Cecil B. Demille Lifetime Achievement Award Sunday.
"Recy Taylor, a name I know and I think you should know too," Winfrey stated.
"In 1944, Recy Taylor was a young wife and a mother. She was just walking home from a church service she'd attended in Abbeville, Alabama when she as abducted by six armed white men, raped and left blindfolded by the side of the road, coming home from church," Winfrey stated.
Despite that horror, Taylordescribed by her brother as a 'devout Christian'later told others that God was with her that night, otherwise she might not have lived.
"They threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone but her story was reported to the NAACP where a young worker by the name of Rosa Parks became the lead investigator on her case and together they sought justice but justice wasn't an option in the era of Jim Crow," explained Winfrey. "The men who tried to destroy her were never persecuted. Recy Taylor died ten days ago, just shy of her 98-th birthday."
Since Winfrey's speech, many have been searching to find out more about Taylor and her story.
A documentary called, "The Rape of Recy Taylor," directed by cy Buirski tells of the brutal attack and the justice Taylor longed for.
"I was begging them to leave me alone," Taylor says in the film. "Don't shoot me. I got to go home and see 'bout my baby. They wouldn't let me go. I can't help but tell the truth what they done to me," she recalled.
In 2011, the Alabama Legislature issued Taylor an apology for failing to prosecute her attackers, even though one of the men had confessed.
Her brother Robert Corbitt told The Root that the apology helped to bring closure for his sister whom he described as a devout 'Christian lady."
"What hurt Recy maybe more than anything was the lies that were told on her. These men admitted that they kidnapped and raped, her but law enforcement said it didn't happen. Not only that, they tried to say she was a prostitute when she was a Christian lady."
In 2010, she told the Associated Press, "I was an honest person and living right," she stated.
Taylor's Christian faith appears to have been a common thread throughout her life.
On the night of her attack, Taylor, who was 24 and a wife and mother at the time, had attended a Pentecostal singing and praying service at Rock Hill Holiness Church.
"She was always happy, full of joy, peace and love," friend Mary Dean Williams told WKRG News 5.
And according to Buirski, Taylor recalled how God kept the men who attacked her from taking her life that night.
"The Lord was just with me that night," Taylor reportedly says in the documentary about her assault.