More than apologies are owed to Recy (U Houston Daily Cougar)

[struggle4progress]

By Brendan Laws
Published on: Thursday, April 21, 2011
Modified on: Thursday, April 21, 2011

Last month, the State of Alabama officially apologized for the lack of justice granted to a survivor of rape during the Jim Crow era. Recy Taylor, the survivor, was 24 years old when the assault happened in 1944. She was kidnapped at gun-and-knifepoint by a group of white men in a car, and then raped by six of them before being thrown back on the street.

The assailants openly admitted to their crime, but because the victim was black and the attackers were white men of economic privilege, the white police officers refused to take Taylor’s side. When the case was brought to trial, the all-white, all-male jury found the rapists innocent, though none of the attackers even showed up to testify ...

Rosa Parks and other civil rights activists originally took up the case, but gained little momentum in the wake of other injustices committed during that era. To gain perspective, two days after the rape, the house of Mrs. Taylor and her family was firebombed ...

http://thedailycougar.com/2011/04/21/more-than-apologies-are-owed-to-recy/