Rosa Parks’ impact on the Civil Rights Movement began well before December 1, 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, spearheading the Montgomery Bus Boycott and casting her into the light as one of the faces of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
But 11 years prior to that, she was a field secretary for the NAACP and was sent to investigate the gang rape of sharecropper Recy Taylor in Abbeville, Alabama. September 3, 1944, Taylor, then 24, was walking home from church when a green Chevrolet filled with white men pulled up alongside her. She was kidnapped, driven into the woods, and brutally raped by six white men who threatened to kill her if she told.
More than a decade before Parks became a civil rights hero, she led a national campaign against sexual assaults on black women, including that of Recy Taylor. The two co-founded the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice, with the goal of assisting black women reclaim their bodies against sexual violence and interracial rape.
In honor of Parks and Taylor’s heroism, and Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October, the SASHA Center and the Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation have partnered for a special screening of the documentary film, “The Rape of Recy Taylor” – the film inspired by the book, “At the Dark End of the Street” by author Danielle McGuire. The film looks at the 1944 gang rape of Taylor, how Parks aided in her defense, and the history of racial violence, particularly against women, in the postwar South. The screening will be held on Wednesday, October 30 from 6-10 p.m. at the Wayne State University Law School, Spencer M. Partrich Auditorium.
Tickets for the event are $20 for general admission and $40 for general admission with a signed copy of “At the Dark End of the Street.” Proceeds from the event will benefit both the Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation and SASHA Center.
“We wanted to team up for Domestic Violence Awareness Month to both highlight the work of the SASHA Center and the vulnerability of women of color in situations like sexual violence and domestic assault,” said McGuire, who wrote her book in 2010. “We also wanted to highlight Rosa Parks’ history as an anti-rape activist throughout her life. That becomes clear in this documentary and through the Recy Taylor story.”
Following the film that will be screened for the first time in Detroit, a panel of local advocates will discuss its impact. The panel will include Kalimah Johnson, Executive Director, SASHA Center; Kym Worthy, Wayne County Prosecutor; Kim Trent, Board President, Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation; Danielle McGuire; and Omari Barksdale, Male Group Facilitator, SASHA Center.
One of the rapists, Hugo Wilson, confessed to the rape and named six other men involved: Dillard York, Billy Howerton, Herbert Lovett, Luther Lee, Joe Culpepper and Robert Gamble. None of them were arrested and on two separate occasions, a grand jury refused to indict the white men, despite a confession and a Chicago Defender report that Taylor’s husband, Willie Guy Taylor, was offered $600 to keep her quiet.
It was not until 2011, nearly 60 years after the case, that the state of Alabama issued a formal apology to Taylor for her treatment by the state’s legal system. She died in Abbeville on December 28, 2017, three days before her next birthday. She was 97. Parks rose to prominence during the Civil Rights movement and moved to Detroit, where she passed way October 24, 2005 at the age of 92.
Though Taylor’s case did not succeed in the short term, the fact that women like her were telling their stories and Parks stood by her side at a time of pronounced stigma and intimidation, drew nationwide attention to issues of racial violence, mobilizing communities and building coalitions that would become the pillars of the civil rights movement.
“It’s important for us to know our history,” said McGuire. “We need to understand, like Rosa Parks, who was an ordinary person in Alabama, that we have the power to change the world that we live in. We can use our voice as a weapon to achieve justice, because the legacy of white supremacy and racism is very much alive, and we all have a role in dismantling it.”
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