Oprah Winfrey paid a visit of the gravesite of Recy Taylor, the Alabama woman whose fight for justice after being gang raped in the Jim Crow South in 1944, garnered national attention and mobilized black activists, including Rosa Parks.
When Winfrey mentioned Taylor during her Golden Globe speech earlier this month, she didn’t know that weeks later she would have the opportunity to visit her final resting place while on assignment for 60 Minutes.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, “ Winfrey wrote on Instagram Tuesday (Jan. 23) alongside a photo from Taylor’s gravesite. “But if I did this would be a powerful one.”
Taylor was a 24-year-old wife, and mother to an infant daughter, when she was kidnapped and gang raped by a group of white men. Although Taylor’s rapist would never face legal repercussions, the state of Alabama issued a formal apology to her in 2011 for failing to prosecute them.
Taylor died in her sleep at a resting home in Abbeville, Ala. last month, at the age of 97.