Recy Taylor, an African-American woman from Abbeville, Alabama, whose abduction and rape by six white men in 1944 made national headlines, died Thursday morning, her brother Robert Corbitt told NBC News.
She would have turned 98 on Sunday.
Corbitt said she passed peacefully in a nursing home in Abbeville.
“[She was] a brave woman and a fighter who tried her best to get it known all over the world,” he said during a phone interview from Alabama.
Taylor recently made headlines again as the film “The Rape of Recy Taylor” made its North America debut at the New York Film Festivalthis fall.
The film chronicles Taylor, who was 24 at the time, walking home from a church service on a September summer evening in 1944, when she was kidnapped, gang raped, and left blindfolded on the side of a road by six white men. According to reports, the men were armed and threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the attack. The young, married mother did tell authorities, however, in the height of the Jim Crow Era.
Nancy Buirski, director of the film, said Taylor passed away peacefully knowing that her story has been told.
Source: Recy Taylor, Alabama woman raped by six white men, dies : NBC News
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