Original subtitles

♪ Oh, run, run, mourner, run ♪

♪ Bright angels above ♪

♪ Oh, run, run, mourner, run ♪

♪ Bright angels above ♪

♪ If I just had two wings ♪

♪ Bright angels above ♪

♪ If I just had two wings ♪

♪ Bright angels above ♪

♪ I'd fly away to the kingdom ♪

♪ Bright angels above ♪

♪ I'd fly away to the kingdom ♪

♪ Bright angels above ♪

♪ Eagle lend me your wings ♪

♪ Bright angels above ♪

♪ Eagle lend me your wings ♪

♪ Bright angels above ♪

♪ A escape for your life ♪

♪ Bright angels above ♪

♪ A escape for your life ♪

♪ Bright angels above ♪

[crickets chirping]

[Alma Daniels] She had to have on her a dress

because she was just coming from church.

[crickets chirping]

[Alma Daniels] What they did to her,

they didn't need to live.

[crickets chirping]

[people singing]

[Robert Corbitt] Recy loved to go to church.

She'd go to church every chance she'd get.

And Miss Fannie was basically the same way.

Miss Fannie's son, West, he wasn't a church goer,

but he just went along for protection.

It was about two miles' walk they had to walk that night.

[crowd singing]

[Robert Corbitt] They had revival going on,

adding a whole in this church.

There's a lot of singing, they have prayer,

and after a while that preacher get up and bring the word.

It'd be very hot

because there was no air conditioner nor fans

in that church at that time.

They had to raise the windows.

And the church were well attended,

wasn't seats for

all the people. Some had to stand up.

You know the

Pentecost people, they like to get up

and dance a little bit on the floor, so...

I don't know if that was a...

Or if Recy done it that night.

Recy just loved to go to church.

She was more Christian than we were,

than the rest of our sisters and brothers, while she,

she was more Christian like.

But, uh...

But that night, when that happened to her,

she was at a...

A homeless church, as they call it.

Uh...

A sanctify church.

That's where she was coming from.

That's where Recy was coming from.

♪ Go tell it on the mountain ♪

♪ Over the hills And everywhere ♪

♪ Go tell it on the mountain ♪

♪ To let my people go ♪

They said that she was a prostitute

at that time and that's

the reason why they picked her up

and all that stuff but she wasn't a prostitute.

My sister was a Christian person.

And she was married and had a baby.

But the things that they claimed that she were,

she wasn't that.

[Robert Corbitt] It was a kind of warm night.

It was September 3rd, you know,

still hot here in Alabama.

They were walking at night

and at that time the streets were very poorly lighted.

There was mad foxes, rabies foxes.

So West got his stick with him.

It was very unusual

for anybody to get attacked by somebody else,

here in Abbeville.

[Robert Corbitt] Well, these boys that, uh...

That took her that night,

they had circled the church a couple of times.

And, um...

About two...

About eight o'clock,

they dec...

They decided to go down.

They made a mistake and went to

a ladies house named Rose Jordan and Sam Jordan.

Uh, they was gonna...

They had two daughters.

And the daughters were about 17 and 18.

Each one of them has a daughter, Sam and Rose.

And they were gonna pick those girls up.

Take all with them, but

oh, they picked on the wrong family there 'cause Sam's...

Sam Jordan and Rose Jordan was

two rough women that you didn't wanna mess with.

[chuckles]

And they chased them.

Um...

Chased these guys away.

And so they kept circling around.

And they'd knew about what time

church was out at night.

And they wouldn't bother them until they got,

oh, about,

at least a half a mile out of town.

And, uh...

And that's when they passed Recy

and Miss Fannie and West and then they'd come back.

And then they'd pass and then they'd come back.

And then... And then they finally stopped behind them.

And that was when her...

caught with the gun.

She decided to run away, right away,

as soon as she saw the gun.

And, uh...

And they yelled to her to get in the car.

She started to run away.

And she couldn't run but of

very short distance because there was a tall fence there.

[slow instrumental music playing]

If she could have got past that fence,

she could have run into the woods

but with all that, she couldn't.

And Miss Fannie told her not to run.

Said, "Don't run because they might shoot you."

And, um...

So, she went and...

Went and got in the car with them and

she said they blindfolded her.

And they took her away.

Well, West was scared because they had the gun there.

And I don't think he was no,

uh...

He was...

couldn't defend them against seven guys.

They were seven of them.

So,

West basically went along with what Miss Fannie said, that is,

try to let 'em

do what they said to do.

Maybe they'll go on.

[Robert Corbitt] They was interested in her because

Recy was a very nice looking young lady

at the age of 24.

[crickets chirping]

[Recy Taylor] He's tried to get me not to go to church that night.

That's 'cause I got a baby.

I think she was nine months old.

And I wanted to go so bad. [chuckles]

So, he said, "You could go ahead,

I'll stay here and keep the baby."

Saw the car

pulled up behind me.

Some white boys,

they had a gun.

And told me they are gonna shoot me,

if I run,

if you don't stand still.

I was begging them to leave me alone.

Don't shoot me.

I gotta go home to see about my baby.

Mm-hmm.

I remember that real good.

I mean, they didn't say nothin' about what they're gonna do to me.

They put me in the car.

They even blindfold me.

Tied my head up,

[coughs]

keeping me from knowing which way I went.

And then talking about killing me.[chuckles]

They had on white shirts,

I remember that.

They had on white shirts.

One of them was Lawrence Lee's boy.

Who then tried to do nothin' to me in the car.

He...

He made me get out the car.

He called that they were gonna lay me down to have sex with me.

[rustling]

[crickets chirping]

Oh, I cried that night.

Trying to get away from them.

But they wouldn't let me go.

[crickets chirping]

[rustling]

I can't help but tell the truth

of what they done to me.

♪ Sheep-pi, sheep-pi ♪

♪ Where you little lamb? ♪

♪ Way down in the valley ♪

♪ Birds and the butterflies ♪

♪ Picking at his eyes ♪

♪ And the po' lil' thing It cried, Mama ♪

♪ Mama's gone ♪

♪ Papa's gone ♪

♪ They shall bring Some horses ♪

♪ White and black ♪

♪ Speckle and gray ♪

♪ All them pretty Little horses ♪

My mother got sick.

Uh...

Back when I was a baby.

And she died when I was 13 months old.

And strangely, um,

enough, you can ask Recy this,

she called Recy to the bed and said

that she was going to die and she wanted her to take care of her baby

and I was the baby.

And Recy took care of me

from then on.

Family life was pretty rough for us because

we had lost our mother.

I used to sit and cry a lot

because I didn't have a mother.

But, uh,

other than that, my sister and there on, they took care of us.

Looked after us

and made sure we had food and everything to eat.

And Recy, she used to care of Robert all of the time. She...

I must...

He almost broke her down carrying him.

She used to take carrying on the hip all the time.

Well, I was in the bed,

and, uh...

And Miss Fannie down, after they

uh,

kidnapped Recy,

she came back

from down, where this happened, up to our house.

She first stopped out there to the...

uh... Will Cook, which was a police.

and told him, then she come over and told us.

And we all woke up.

My father got dressed and...

and, uh...

me and my sister Alma stood on the porch

the whole time this was going on.

We both was crying, you know, 'cause

we hear the guy has a gun and we doesn't know they was gonna kill her.

My daddy reached up,

another gun was on the wall.

My daddy reached up and got the gun, and I...

come out the door.

He was bare feet, he didn't...[chuckles]

He didn't have no shoes or anything on, so he,

he was just walking up and down the road.

He did that cleaning till she returned.

And...

me and my baby brother, we are standing on the porch

and we were just crying.

And, uh...

[crickets chirping]

We thought that they were going to, uh...

kill...

kill her.

[footsteps]

[Robert Corbitt] And after they finished with her,

they brought her back almost into town, put out.

And my father was walking everywhere looking for her.

She... He had, uh...

been to two other Lover's Lanes here

and he was walking so till his shirt was

wet with sweat

because he didn't know where they took her to.

And he saw a shadow of somebody about,

oh, four blocks away.

And turned out that was Recy there, brought back.

And she came running down to where he was.

And she put her arms around him.

Held on to him for a while.

And shortly after that, Lewey Corbitt,

and the police showed up.

Lewey Corbitt, who Recy worked for

that lay right next door, he was the sheriff,

he was supposed to be out looking for her,

but I'm not sure what he was doing, very much looking.

He just happened to come by.

Recy and my father were on the street. Picked 'em up

and got 'em in the car and brought 'em back down to the Three Point

across the street from our house.

Recy had promised these guys, that if they didn't kill her

and let her go home to her child,

she wouldn't tell anybody.

As soon as she got back, she told everything that she could tell.

Everything.

Described the car

and Lewey Corbitt knew

whose car it was. It was,

uh, Hugo Wilson.

He had a

green Chevrolet.

He was only about

I'd say two football fields away from our house, where he lived.

Just down the street, he could have yelled on and got it.

Meanwhile, me and my sister Alma

were standing on the porch

and we could hear everything that was being said over there.

So, they went and got Hugo and brought him there

and asked Recy to look at

this guy and see if

he was one of the guys.

And Recy said, "Yes,

he's one."

And he called her a liar right there.

Said, he haven't seen her before in his life.

But he had to be wrong about that because Recy passed his house all the time.

Recy didn't live very far from him.

He knew her. He knew her husband, too.

And so, Willie Guy came up where Recy was and he embraced her.

She didn't...

She didn't have too many words to say that particular night.

She mostly was just crying and upset.

Those young boys felt like they can do it and get away with it.

They really felt like they could.

I... Um...

They knew nothing was gonna happen to them.

What they did to her,

and you know, my sister didn't have any more kids after that.

And never got pregnant after that.

And they didn't only just have sex with her,

but after they got through mutilating her,

they played in her body.

["This Bitter Earth" playing]

♪ And if my life ♪

♪ Is like the dust ♪

♪ Ooh, that hides ♪

♪ The glow of a rose ♪

[Robert Corbitt] The reason so many people had gotten away with it,

I think they felt that the black woman's body didn't belong to her.

♪ Oh, what good am I? ♪

♪ What good am I? ♪

♪ Heaven only knows ♪

[James Johnson II] White men have had access to black women.

Forcibly.

If they wanted one they would get 'em.

It was something that their fathers, grandfathers taught them.

The attitudes of the treatment of black women

was the same as it was on the plantation.

I don't think, uh, with the rape case of Aunt Recy, was that unusual because...

First of all, they did not regard black people as humans, first of all.

This goes back to the plantation, we were animals.

Uh, monkeys.

And so, they felt that we were really not human beings, so this

attitude transcended from the plantation. Even to,

uh...

Even to today, if you will because there are some white males, uh,

you know, who still do not believe that we are human beings.

That we are animals and, so, therefore, um...

You know, so you kill a animal, you kill a, you know, you kill a dog,

it's no different.

By having the power

to have sex with black women when they wanted to,

they were in control.

[woman singing]

[James Johnson II] Even on the plantation,

from what I understand, is that young white boys

would go to the slave quarters, when you become of age

and got ready to engage in sex.

You go there and pick 'em by

a woman to have sex with.

And even to have children with if necessary.

It was just common here in the South.

Whether it was on the plantation or on the, um, sharecroppers farms.

It was just something common that happened here.

Intimidation was one thing

that was used to keep

black men under control and then have access to black women.

For a black man, even if he dreamed of a white woman,

he better not even tell it.

But the while males could go

and come into your house

or come by and blow the horn and your woman go out to the car and get it with him

and come back and hour or two later.

You know, the black men knew what was happening,

but for survival purposes,

this is the attitude that was prevalent throughout the South.

Probably, some slave owners felt

that they could have their will

with the female slaves, since they owned the slaves.

And, um...

I'm sure in some instances,

um...

That was

consensual type of an affair.

But in those days,

an old saying used to be, in these parts,

that every white man

had another woman at every crossroads,

white and black.

My father started to walk back and forward, back and forward

because he was so mad and upset with them,

for what they had did to her.

He was just walking back and forward.

And me and Robert,

we started walking back and forward

behind him, you know.

I don't know whether she was feeling pain or what.

That was, uh...

That was after they kept her about

four-five hours

down in the woods,

seven guys, one night.

They said they wanted her to act

just like she was in bed with her husband.

She knew Hugo Wilson,

she knew Billy Howerton,

and Luthor Lee.

But I'm not sure the rest of them she knew.

And Recy went out to try to round up the rest of the boys,

but they never brought in the rest of them, only Hugo.

These same boys used to hang out in Town Square.

There is an old bank,

that's where they hung out, on the steps there.

You go through town at night, they'd be sitting there.

From what I understand,

two or three of those guys came back to that hang-out spot

that night when the rape took place.

I don't think they bothered with those boys until the next morning.

Recy and her husband spent the rest of the night at my house

and then they went back home that Monday.

And that's when there was fire-bombed.

They set the porch on fire.

But Recy's husband was able to put it out.

They moved in with us the next day.

We got a lot of threats in those days.

Just behind of our house we had a tall tree.

It was a chinaberry tree.

And high up in the tree that was a limb like a Y.

My father, who was staying in the house

until he know we was all in bed

and he would sneak out back and go up that tree.

He didn't want us to know that he was sleeping in that tree.

He had a shotgun,

double barrel shotgun,

and he'll sit up in that tree at night

and guard the house.

During the day, he was setting the porch at light

for we had some hedges there then,

concealed the porch from one side of the house.

And he kept his gun laying right there in front of him.

He was always... Had that gun right there.

He would have done something with that gun,

but he felt that he had to stay alive to protect his family.

Otherwise, he would have...

He would've done something terrible, I know he would've.

As a matter of fact, he told me he would have.

Mr. Lewey Corbitt, he was the sheriff then.

He was trying to make my father take his gun back to the house.

He said, because you'd get in trouble if you try to kill somebody.

But my father didn't.

He, uh...

My daddy would tell us, tell us, "Don't be afraid.

'Cause nobody's gonna hurt you as long as I'm living.

Nobody's going to hurt you."

[Robert Corbitt] He's love his family to death.

Oh, he love his family.

I believe that's the reason he didn't do anything

to try to get revenge against 'em boys because

he felt that he had to stay alive to protect us.

One day we were fishing

and he told me, he said, "You know, I could've

got five of those guys in one night."

I said, "What guys?", he said, "The guys that raped my daughter."

Lewey Corbitt, he had the same name as we have.

We got the Corbitt name from Lewey Corbitt family

after slave was freed.

So, they owned my ancestors.

He'd come to our house and say, "Don't say anything. Don't say a word out."

That was... He was always saying that.

"Don't talk to anybody about it."

And we just,

every time he'd say that, we'd talk as much as we can.

I don't know, if my father or somebody

was contacting the NAACP representative,

here in Abbeville.

That's how Rosa Parks came in.

[Crystal Feimster] Recy Taylor isn't the first black woman

that Rosa Parks goes to after a sexual assault.

This is the work that she is doing

prior to the Montgomery bus boy case.

She's an investigator.

So, when these cases and calls come into the NAACP,

they send her out.

She went in our house, not more than,

um...

15 minutes before Lewey Corbitt showed up.

[Crystal Feimster] People know who Rosa Parks is.

Because when Rosa goes to interview Recy that first time,

the sheriff, the county sheriff,

is rolling by the house.

Um...

You know, drives by, drives by

and then finally bust into the cabin.

Um, and say us, "Get out of here."

He'd come in the house during this

and told her she had to leave

and to get out of town.

So, she left and two weeks later,

she came back.

And this time he come in and...

He bust in the house,

grab Rosa Parks by the arm

and pull her out on the porch.

He wouldn't let her to come down the steps.

We have... We had three steps on our porch.

And she... He just pulled her

from the high part all the way down on the ground.

Rosa Parks went down on her knees, fell right in the yard.

Then he told her to get out of town

and if she'd come back he was gonna put her in jail and keep her there.

She left.

Rosa leaves, but she is not intimidated.

She comes back, right.

Um, and she comes back and on the second visit,

the sheriff comes again.

Um, and they physically throw her out of the house.

Um...

And this is not unusual.

And Rosa, of course,

would know to expect

that if a white sheriff comes in,

he's gonna ultimately put his hands on her.

But also, to reveal something about her, too.

That for the sheriff to come in and to throw her out of the steps

implies that Rosa was resistant.

[woman singing]

[Crystal Feimster] We can link this up to her refusal to give up her seat on the bus.

That there is a claim that she is making

and it's a bodily claim

to be able to own a space.

whether that's Recy's kitchen table

or the seat on the bus

that she wants

and believes that she has it right to be in that space.

In her actions, she is saying,

"You're not gonna put your foot on my neck."

[chuckles] You know,

And I will be back.

You can throw me down the steps,

you can yank me off of this bus,

but I am not going to concede my rights.

I'm not gonna concede Recy's rights.

That's one of the things that makes Rosa exceptional,

that she was willing to risk her life.

Black women know when they are arrested

and they are taken into a jail,

anything could happen and they may not come out.

Even if they do come out, they're gonna come out

in many ways as victims of police brutality.

There's a place where she does. That's where here family is from.

Her father side of the family is there.

She still has relatives in Abbeville.

And so she goes there. So, it's personal in some ways.

Um...

And I think, she also understands, um...

at a sort of gut level

what it means to be a victim of sexual assault.

[Rosa Parks] In the late spring of 1931,

I was past my 18th birthday.

It was during The Depression and I was quite lucky to have

a maid of a work job in the home of a couple

who paid me four dollars weekly for seven days a week.

The Mr. and Mrs. were off for their night of pleasure,

the baby was put to bed by me and he was sleeping.

It was a typical hot Alabama night.

All the doors and windows were open.

I saw Mr. Charlie.

He poured himself a drink from the whiskey bottle along the table.

He stood near me sipping the drink.

I said the folks maybe coming back soon, if he wanted to wait for them.

He said he was there to see me.

He moved nearer to me and put his hand on my waist.

At his touch, I jumped away as quickly as an unbridled filly.

He asked me not to be afraid.

He would not hurt me.

He liked me.

He didn't want me to be lonely and would I be sweet to him.

He had money to give me for accepting his attentions.

I felt filthy and stripped naked of any shred of decency.

In a flash of movement, I was no longer a decent, self-respecting teenage girl,

but a flesh-pot.

A strumpet to be bargained for and parceled out as a commodity.

He was fast becoming intoxicated on alcohol

and lustful desire for my body.

I knew that no matter what happened,

I would never yield to this white man's bestiality.

I was ready and willing to die

but give any consent,

never.

All my fear had been replaced

by a determination to stand completely alone against

this formidable foe as long as I drew the breath of life.

I talked about the white man's inhumane treatment of the negro,

how I hated all white people, especially, him.

He asked me to give him a price.

I was not for sale.

I asked him if the white woman was not good enough for him.

I taunted him about the supposed white supremacy.

The white man's law of drawing them color lines of segregation.

I said there was nothing he could do to get my consent.

He need not think that because he was a low-down, dirty dog of a white man

and I was a poor defenseless, helpless colored girl,

that he could run over me.

If he wanted to kill me,

and rape a dead body,

he was welcome.

But he would have to kill me first.

He said the color of a person didn't matter to him, if he liked the person.

I said it would not matter to me if there was no color line

and all people could be respected equally.

I would not be intimate with a man

that the law did not permit me to be married to

and respected by.

At long last, Mr. Charlie got the idea that I meant 'no,'

very definitely, 'no.'

He said he would not bother me any further.

I picked up the newspaper,

opened it wide,

holding it where I couldn't see him

and started reading.

[Crystal Feimster] Most women know,

that their cases aren't gonna be believed.

So they don't tell their stories.

Rosa doesn't tell her story,

she writes her story at some point much later.

It's an unspeakable crime

and people use that language to talk about sexual assault

because they don't want people to speak about it.

I can't imagine having to experience that

I can't imagine what it would take for someone

to tell that story publicly.

So, there's no way that you can't

hear Recy's story and not feel like she's a hero.

[Robert Corbitt] We all got ready that day

and was gonna come uptown and listen to the hearing.

We got almost up to the courthouse

and the police stopped us

and told us we couldn't go any further.

We had to stay right there.

They wouldn't let any blacks into town that day.

They brought Recy into the courthouse

and they didn't take her into a courtroom

but she was in a, uh...

a little back small room.

That's where they talked with her.

But she wasn't face with them.

They had her in one room

and those guys in another room.

She said she never saw the guys in the courthouse.

They didn't have Recy up there for very long before they let her go.

She'd come back down and join us.

We all walked back to Three Point.

It was one of the biggest cover-ups.

I thought, sure they would have

found them guilty of it, you know.

But I should have known better.

Because back in them days, they covered it up.

Cover up stuff so bad and put it off on...

on, uh...

Black people just how,

you know, they the one that cause it, they the one done it.

And, and they knew...

And they knew

that those guys was wrong

and they knew that they did that.

But they weren't gonna do nothin about it.

How do you learn to stay in your place?

You just do what all that matters.

You know the consequence of it.

If you got out of you place, you'd probably be hurt, beat up,

put in jail or something like that.

And we all know where our places was.

I remember, one time, that, uh...

I was uptown

and a policeman

was coming through a door.

He had his mother with him.

And he slapped me because

I didn't move back.

I didn't move so that they could come through.

I was going in the door and he was coming out of the

five-and-ten-cent store door

and he slapped me.

And that's when I slapped him back.

And they...

Oh, well, we fought.

And then that's when...

first time I've been to jail and the last time I've been to jail.

[chuckles]

Somebody went and told my father about what happened

and he came down there.

And I was up in the jailhouse

and I was looking out the window.

He says, "What are you doing up there?

Didn't you know better?"

I said, "Well, Daddy,

he slapped me and I hit him back."

Daddy said, "You don't go to town no more

if you don't know how to act."

[chuckles] Well...

♪ I'm gonna buy a paper doll ♪

♪ That I can call my own ♪

♪ A doll that other fellows ♪

♪ Cannot steal ♪

♪ I'd rather have A paper doll ♪

♪ To call my own ♪

♪ Than have a fickle-minded Real, live girl ♪

♪ I guess I had A million dollars or more ♪

[James Johnson II] As a young boy,

the only theater was the Archie Theater.

We would fill our pockets with rocks.

And when the lights would go out,

we would take the rocks out and throw them down

and hit people in the head.

Pardon the expression where they would say, 'niggers throwing rocks.'

The whites would sit downstairs in the nice chairs

and we would spit down on people's heads.

We had our way of fighting Jim Crow as kids.

♪ And it's tough To love a doll ♪

♪ That's not your own ♪

♪ I'm through with All of them ♪

♪ I'll never fall again ♪

[Esther Cooper Jackson] Any strangers

who came in to Abbeville,

if they were black, they were suspicious

that they were there to look into Recy Taylor

and see what we were plotting.

So that, when I did go, I had someone

drive me from Birmingham to Abbeville,

go in a back entrance.

She was traumatized, like she was, uh,

in shock.

When I first met her, we embraced

and I told her we were gonna fight

to make sure that justice was won.

I took her case back to Birmingham

to the Southern Negro Youth Congress.

And we made that one of our major projects

using her as an example

of what happened to so many black women

who didn't speak up or were afraid to speak up.

It was dangerous for all blacks but particularly for women.

Women were often attacked like Recy Taylor,

raped or sometimes disappeared.

One would have to be careful about

what time of day that they walked.

Young girls were very much aware of this.

Even going to and from school,

particularly in rural areas

they had to make sure to not get in a car alone.

Recy Taylor, obviously, was a very strong woman

who spoke up

and, um, therefore influenced

many other women.

The first thing I did was started writing press releases about her case

to be distributed in all of theBlack Press.

Also sent it to the regular press

but it just wasn't published.

She was surrounded by people who wanted to get her out of there

including Rosa Parks.

["Come on, come on" playing]

Rosa took Recy to Montgomery.

♪ Well, come on Come on, come on ♪

♪ Don't you wanna go? ♪

♪ Well, come on Come on, come on ♪

♪ Don't you wanna go? ♪

♪ Well, come on Come on, come on ♪

♪ Don't you wanna go? ♪

♪ Yes, I want to go ♪

♪ Well, the ship is At the landing ♪

[Robert Corbitt] Rosa Parks put into a boarding house.

That's what it was called in those days.

I remember she was on Johnson Street.

It was in the 500 block.

She was there with her baby and her husband.

The three of them was there.

["The Ship Is At The Landing" playing]

They had there to keep out of sight of these guys.

They were afraid they might try to do something to them.

At the time she was up there

we'd had hardly no communication with her at all.

As a matter of fact, they didn't want anybody to know where she was.

Rosa Parks, she was protecting them.

[woman] Orange Juice or water?

[Rosa Parks] Water, but tea is fine.

-[woman] All right, here we go. -[Rosa Parks] Okay.

[man] What year did you join the NAACP?

[Rosa Parks] It's 19... It's in December, 1933.

[man] From the time you joined to the time you became the Secretary?

[Rosa Parks] It was my first day on the job.

[both laughing]

[man] How did that happen?

[Rosa Parks] Well, you see, that's what happened but when I went to the

meeting, it was going to be

the Annual Election Day.

So, I paid my membership

and then they had election of officers. [chuckles]

[man] And how many people were there?

[Rosa Parks] I guess about ten-- between a dozen and 15.

Just as you know, And I was the only woman there.

[man] So, you got to be the Secretary there 'cause you were a woman.

[Rosa Parks] Well, no. They just said they needed a Secretary.

And I think the only reason that I was

too timid to say no.

And I just started taking minutes.

That was the way I was elected Secretary. [chuckles]

[Crystal Feimste] She didn't just come out of nowhere.

People were introduced to Rosa Parks for the first time.

She's Rosa, who didn't give up her seat on the bus.

They already imagined her as this elderly states woman, right.

With her beautiful silver gray hair.

Um, but she was actually quite young.

She had a long history of protest

and grass-roots organizing.

She learned how to be an activist through her family

and her family politics,

her grandfather in particular, was a role model for her.

He was someone who would not tolerate oppression

and believed that his children and his children's children

shouldn't have to submit to white supremacy.

She'd already been to Highlander School

and had training on 'how do you engage in public protest.'

So, it wasn't a long leap for her

to join the NAACP

and begin to fight for civil rights for black people in the South.

The Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor,

Rosa Parks doesn't serve on the Committee,

but she creates an environment where people in the community come together.

They are the leaders of their destiny.

That's something black women

bring to the movement at every level.

The press is gonna be a key tool.

Um, and getting their story out there,

the more people who know,

the better it is for their case.

And they also know the South.

The South does not respond well

to outside press, right?

So, if they can get that story out there

and that's why the sheriff is there from the get-go.

He doesn't want Rosa to leave with that story

because he knows what it means

for that story to leave Abbeville, right.

Um, it means, that people are gonna come in,

there's gonna be investigations, there's gonna be pressure.

And that they're gonna have to defend their actions.

Rosa Parks is operating

from a place where rape is a crime.

And the rape of a black woman is illegally a crime,

even if custom and tradition doesn't allow for that.

With Recy's case, we see

she get's a hearing.

But it's not a fair hearing and they understand that.

That it's going through the motions.

And then when that hearing comes to a close,

we don't get justice for Recy.

So, what does the... What does the Committee want next?

They want a fair hearing, right? [chuckles]

So, they... they...

It's like they beat that horse they're in.

We want a fair hearing.

And the only way to get that is to pressure.

Through letter writing,

through the press.

[Esther Cooper Jackson] Most events happening in black life were not published

in the daily papers.

The major newspapers in the country and major magazines

didn't mention it.

The only place we really were able to publish

articles about Recy and the others

was through The Chicago Defender, The Pittsburgh Courier,

The Amsterdam News,

The Baltimore, et cetera,

through theBlack Press.

[Crystal Feimster] TheBlack Press is a protest paper.

It's trying to counter

what the white press is publishing.

It is a lifeline for the movement.

It's how you get people to join the movement,

it's how you get people to understand

that their issues are connected.

So, what happens in Montgomery matters in Mississippi.

It's gonna make a huge difference

once it's on the national radar

because in the South there is a culture of silent.

What happened to Recy?

How common is this? What can we do as a community

to publicize this, to ensure that Recy is gonna have justice?

So that, her case just doesn't disappear.

[Danielle L. McGuire] The Committee for Equal Justice was largely

waging a publicity campaign

and trying to shame the state of Alabama,

uh, for their failure

to really properly investigate and prosecute her case.

What they ask people to do is send letters to the Governor

demanding an investigation,

demanding a trial.

And they send postcards and petitions

to hold the assailants accountable by the thousands.

And these postcards come from all over the country.

So the newspapers are really instrumental

in spreading the story.

And the Committee itself

is really instrumental in getting people to

send in petitions and postcards.

There is a massive Harlem rally

for Recy Taylor at the Hotel Theresa

which is one of the, sort of, iconic hotels in Harlem

that Muhammad Ali would stay at and others.

And they hold the rally for Recy Taylor in the ballroom.

And, you know, hundreds of people come.

People from all walks of the Black Freedom Movement in the 1940s.

Leftists, communist, liberals, progressives,

they're all there and they all chip in money

to help spread the word of the terror that is in Alabama.

It's part of, kind of,

infrastructure of injustice

where the white press ignores these kinds of crimes

and then,

and then there is no record of them happening, which gives

judges and juries

plausible deniability of any knowledge

and maybe this is a rumor, you know, it's not even in the newspaper.

And that's why it's so important that theBlack Press

publishes these stories.

[Crystal Feimster] This is a long tradition

from Frederik Douglass' newspaper to Ida B. Wells,

the black people understand that the press is a weapon.

They might not be able to assault somebody with a gun

and get justice, but that the pen is a weapon.

That if we can narrate our stories,

then we actually have a chance.

They have no feeling for a colored girl, Peter.

No, not a speck.

When one of us even walks past on the street, they whistle

and say all kinds of things out loud

just as if we weren't there at all.

They... They don't care.

We're just...

just colored women.

[Crystal Feimster] Race films taking on white supremacy.

This is very similar to theBlack Press.

You have Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates

targeting lynching and sexual assault

that plays with both lynching of a family,

a black woman and a black man

and also the sexual assault

of a biracial woman

who actually turns out to be the daughter of the man who's trying to rape her.

Race films made for black audiences were popular

because they got to see a diversity

of black characters

who's not the Sambo or the Jezebel.

Black people felt like it was more authentic

even if it was fictional.

They wanted to see that without the white gaze.

If we go back to slavery and what black women

could claim, right,

they couldn't claim

legal recourse.

There were no laws in place that would protect them.

Recy's case, is one of the first

that pushes equal access to the court.

They go back to the Governor and they say, "We want another hearing."

And they pressure, and they pressure.

It's that pressure from outside the state,

from New York, and California, and Michigan,

from labor unions, and longshoreman,

auto workers from all around the country.

It's their petitions for justice

that finally moved Governor Chauncey Sparks,

to hire private investigators

to go to Abbeville to see what really happened.

[Crystal Feimster] She has witnesses.

She has a woman and her son who were walking with her from the church.

They report her abduction right away.

The police are there

when her father and her husband

find her staggering down the street.

It's hard to not believe Recy.

It's very easy for the sheriff not to do anything about it,

without question, but you know that he knows

and everybody knows what happened.

And everybody knows she's not a prostitute.

This is about us being able to hear

and the stories that people are willing to tell

and they have the courage to tell.

Recy is part of a longer tradition of black women

saying, "This is not right."

That not only do we deserve protection, but we deserve justice.

Rape,

is this universal thing

that women suffer,

regardless of age, race, religion,

sexual orientation.

What I think it's gonna be interesting to think about

is the way the legal system fails women, regularly.

[man] December 27th, 1944,

supplementary report,

regarding the alleged ravishing of Recy Taylor,

Abbeville, Alabama, by seven white boys,

on the night of September 3rd.

Report submitted by John O' Harris, Assistant Attorney General.

Upon arriving at Abbeville, we contacted the sheriff

and in his first statement he told the investigators

that this negro was nothing but a whore

and that he had on one or two occasions incarcerated her.

But he now says that he has never arrested her

and committed her to jail for any offense.

He further stated that

he has never had any trouble with her or her husband

and that their reputation is as good as any negro's in that community.

The sheriff stated that he arrested all of the boys

but it is our off-handed opinion

that the sheriff never actually placed any of these defendants under arrest.

We decided to interview each boy

alleged to have had intercourse with Recy Taylor.

We first talked to Dillard York.

York said that he would tell all he knew.

[Dillard York] I'll tell all I know.

[man] And he said that he got in Wilson's car,

[Dillard York] I got in Wilson's car

in front of the Abbey theater about ten o'clock, the night she was picked up.

I had been to the picture show and when I went to the car,

Hugo Wilson and Herbert Lovett were in the car.

And we rode around town for a little while.

And then picked up Billy Howerton,

Robert Gamble,

Luther Lee,

and Joe Culpepper

on the corner of the North Cut drug store.

We started out on the highway leading toward Three Points

and picked her up.

We did not have her in mind

as I had never seen her before.

But I thought Billy Howerton knew her.

I heard Lovett ask her

if she was going or not and she said she would go.

There was no gun in the car

and no one put a gun on her.

When we got to the place where we had intercourse with her,

Lovett asked her to undress

and she undressed willingly and without protest.

Lovett had intercourse with her first,

me next,

Wilson next,

Lee next,

Culpepper next and Gamble last.

We all took off our pants and underwear

and left the top to our underwear on.

All of us used rubbers.

She did not say anything during the time all of us had intercourse with her

and she was undressed except for her shoes and stockings.

We let her rest between the acts of intercourse.

And each time she was asked if she was ready

before another boy had intercourse with her.

After we were all dressed,

Lovett went to each boy, collecting money from all of us and paid her.

He asked her if she was satisfied

and she said she was satisfied.

And Lovett asked her if she was going to say anything about it,

and she told him she would not say anything about it.

We then got in the car

and put her out at the street light.

We walked uptown and sat on the corner

at the bank for about five minutes.

This was the first time I had ever had anything to do with a negro woman.

I saw Recy Taylor at the courthouse

during the grand jury investigation

and recognized her as being

the woman that me and the other boys took off that night.

[man] The next boy we talked to was Robert Gamble

and his statement is substantially the same

as that given by Dillard York.

Next boy interviewed by us was Luther Lee.

Lee stated that they proceeded on...

[Luther Lee] We proceeded on to the place where we had intercourse.

While there, I heard Recy say

something about her baby and that she had to go home.

But Lovett is the one that told her to undress.

All of us had intercourse with her, except Billy Howerton.

And Howerton said he did not wanna have intercourse with her because the negro knew him.

[man] We talked with Billy Howerton.

He was reluctant to give us any information.

But finally said he would tell all he knew

and his statement collaborates the statements of York, Gamble and Lee

in all material aspects.

[Billy Howerton] I will tell all I know.

[man] He said that he did not see a blindfold on the face of Recy Taylor.

[Billy Howerton] I did not see a blindfold on the face of Recy Taylor.

But there could have been one there.

[man] He further stated that he did not have intercourse with Recy Taylor.

[Billy Howerton] I did not have intercourse with Recy Taylor.

I did not wanna have intercourse with her

and I told the other boys that I knew Recy Taylor.

But in truth and in fact, I did not know her.

But just made that statement to them

because I did not want to have anything to do with her.

[man] The next one we talked to was Willie Joe Culpepper

He stated that he got into the automobile in the town of Abbeville...

[Willie Joe Culpepper] I got into the automobile in the town of Abbeville

with the other boys and we were talking about getting a woman.

And we rode out on the highway

toward Dothan

and saw two women and a man

walking along the highway.

We went down the road

and turned around

and came back and stopped the automobile.

Herbert Lovett had a shotgun.

In a few seconds,

Recy Taylor came to the automobile

with Herbert Lovett behind her with the shotgun in his hand.

Just before we got in the automobile,

I heard Recy Taylor asking the negro woman

and negro man,

one or the other,

to come and go with her.

And they said they could not go.

Herbert Lovett made her get out of the car

and we had the gun on her

and told her to undress.

And she was crying

and asking us to let her go home to her husband and baby.

When it was all over

and each of us dressed,

as did Recy Taylor,

someone, I do not know who,

put a blindfold on Recy's face.

[man] And he took hold of himself hardly and said...

[Willie Joe Culpepper] While she was having intercourse with Herbert Lovett,

we walked over there to where she lay on the ground

and we placed some money in her hand.

Hugo Wilson was the driver of the automobile.

[man] Hugo Wilson denied he had anything to do with Recy Taylor...

[Hugo Wilson] I had nothin' to do with Recy Taylor on that night.

Stated by the other boys.

I was not present.

I know nothin' in the world about it.

I was arrested the night of September 3rd,

and while in the automobile with the sheriff,

Recy Taylor was called to the automobile

and asked by the sheriff if I was one of the boys

and she said, "Yes, he is one of them."

I told her she was a damn liar.

The sheriff is a liar when he says

that I gave him the names of the other six boys.

All the other boys are liars when they say

that I was there at the time rest of them had intercourse with Recy Taylor

and that they were lying when they said that.

[man] The next and last boy that we talked to was Herbert Lovett.

He was in the army.

Lovett stated that

he knew nothing of the affair for which he was being interrogated.

[Herbert Lovett] I know nothing of the affair for which I am being interrogated.

Well, I do know I was placed under bond

but I was never arrested for this matter.

[man] Each of the boys that did make a statement about this affair stated

that they did not know Recy Taylor before this night

and that none of them ever remembered having seen her.

Recy Taylor stated to us that

she could not identify any of these boys.

And if they were all put into a line up with

eight, 12 or 15 boys,

she could not go in and pick out a single one

that picked her up that night and ravished her.

Respectfully submitted,

John O' Harris, Assistant Attorney General.

[Chris Money] It doesn't take much to get an indictment.

It's a one sided story,

so, what I mean by that is

when you go to the grand jury,

um...

it's secret,

the state only calls their witnesses.

It's not like the defense attorneys

get to cross-examine during a grand jury process.

It doesn't work like that.

The District Attorney at that time was,

a solicitor, I think it's what they ca... actually took the case to the grand jury, twice.

And never could get an indictment.

And as I understand it

Mrs. Taylor testified and they still couldn't get an indictment.

During those times, African-Americans could not serve.

There was an all white male jury.

I don't think the facts were the problem

in the Recy Taylor case.

I think that color had everything to do with it.

[Alma Daniels] They'd left that night.

Joined the army,

navy,

'cause you know they had done wrong.

[Crystal Feimster] It takes profound courage

to speak out.

This is a story that you want to share with the world.

There is no sense of,

um, what did I do?

That's sort of, um, you know,

power of shame and guilt that often

comes with a sexual assault.

You know, that Recy did not have that shame.

She didn't have that guilt.

She knew that what had happened to her was a brutal assault.

We know that victims of rape and trauma

suffer all kinds of emotions

and that may come later,

but it doesn't come in those moments

where she is prepared to speak out about what happened to her.

It's about saying that I am a woman,

and that I have a right to consent

and that when I do not consent, it is a crime

and that, you know, there's hell to pay.

Luther got a pretty bad whipping

for something that I never did know what it was.

My dad worked him over.

Not with his fist, you know, he had a strap.

Luther actually, ran around

with good people that had too much time on the hands.

You know, time is a devil's workshop.

I liked every one of 'em. I liked all of 'em.

With the whole... if...

I never did know exactly what it was, like I told you.

But I knew there was something, but...

We didn't have any...

Abbeville,

would not tell on anybody else.

Dillard was

in with the group that was always up to something.

It wasn't jail time, but they,

they got their share of

carrying on, you know, doing things that

kids would do.

Lewey Corbitt was the sheriff there.

One of the nicest.

If he put you in jail,

you had to go.

He'd give you every break.

He was married to Aunt Suzie.

And she was Mother's sister.

But Uncle Lewey, uh,

never lost an election.

He didn't even have to get out on politics

because everybody knew who he was.

So, here we have a grand jury

made up of local white men,

farmers, business owners, sharecroppers,

being asked to indict their sons,

their neighbors, their brothers.

You know, local boys

who for all intents and purposes in their minds, at least

were just trying to have a little fun and got carried away.

They were never gonna indict

Recy Taylor's rapists.

[Robert Corbitt] My father lived right just across the street from

the Howertons.

And Billy Howerton

was in and out of the house, but he was,

seemed to be pretty, kind of, shy guy.

He'd never look in our directions.

Recy did see Billy Howerton after the rape.

But they wouldn't make

eye contact with each other.

Even as a kid, at that time,

I was expecting something bad to happen,

but they stayed distant away from me.

And they know my father always

had his shotgun handy.

So, I think they were a little afraid of him.

He believed in that double barrel shotgun. [chuckles]

We have, you know,

black men in her family, her husband and her father

who were unable to protect her, right?

They're no longer... They don't have

access to kind of the traditional, um...

the traditional mechanisms of manhood

being able to protect your wife and your daughter.

White men are always in a position to protect

their wives and daughters, right.

It becomes the justification for lynching.

We had a good relationship

with the blacks and I knew

a great number of them in town.

The blacks and the whites...

They knew they were blacks and they knew they were whites,

but they were friends.

Yes, we knew the Wilsons before the rape

and also know Hugo before the rape

because they owned a taxi cab fleet.

It was, uh...

Wilson call Wilson cab.

I can't remember the old man's name

but we used to call him Bulldog Wilson 'cause he

was out of shape, like a bulldog.

And, uh...

I would deliver groceries to their house.

My father told me not to talk to the Wilsons.

Give them a yes or a no and leave.

Recy was like a mother-sister to me, she raised me.

I didn't feel good about it at all.

[Danielle L. McGuire] So, it's never the same as enduring a rape.

The effect on the husband is never the same,

uh, as it is on the woman who had to endure the rape.

But it's used as a political weapon all around the world

to undermine, um, men

and their positions in society.

When I think about Robert Corbitt, for example,

and the ways in which he internalized

the rape of his sister, Recy Taylor,

it really gets to the way sexual violence

terrorizes people, not just the victims.

It's what motivates him today to help

get his sister's story out into the world.

I get by only without them knowing it. [chuckles]

I would never let them know that I was inquiring about them.

I would just be talking to him, I'd say, "How is Luther Lee? Is he still around?"

My brother Luther Lee left to join the Navy when he was 17.

And he stayed in there a while and then got out and then went back

and stayed till he was retired.

And that made him be in World War II

and the Korean War

and the Vietnam War.

My brother Dillard York was the oldest and, uh,

he finished high school in Abbeville and joined the Navy in World War II.

He had the Purple Heart from being wounded

and he served as the chief recorder

for the Korean peace talks.

I knew Joe Culpepper.

He later on went on to service

and when he did he was in the Korean War

and they captured him and he stayed in prison for a long time.

He was a Korean War prisoner.

And he came back as a hero.

From talking to him afterwards, it was just the

experience of seeing all the

people that was killed at Pearl Harbor

and all the devastation there

just changed his mind about the life.

He married a girl from Japan.

That went over great.

Lewey Corbitt told, um,

told my father that

two of these guys had got killed.

He was told that, uh,

one guy killed in a car accident,

and one guy killed at a man's house going

with another man's wife.

This, uh...

So, we presumed that had happened.

So, years later,

we just find out that those guys didn't die until...

Well, one of them died in 2010.

Well, that was part of the cover up.

What happens to Recy's case after the second grand jury?

Nothing, nothing happens to Recy Taylor's case.

The Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor,

regroups as the Committee for Equal Justice.

And because crimes like this happen again, and again, and again,

across the South.

They organized to defend another black woman in another state

whose been assaulted by a group of white men.

It's common in a lot of social movements

for victims of crimes to be used as symbols,

as figures that people can rally around,

and then when they become less useful, the organization moves on.

It's really a tragedy because

I don't think Recy Taylor really knew the extent to which

so many people around the country rallied to her defense

and took comfort and courage from her brave testimony.

But she also didn't really know

when they decided to move on

because no one consulted with her.

She goes on with her life.

She goes on living. She's back in Abbeville

and the attention has moved elsewhere.

And I think she's largely forgotten about.

And she leads a very hard life

as a sharecropper,

she moves to Florida to pick oranges,

her marriage ends,

her daughter dies in a tragic car accident.

She suffers enormously

because of what happened to her and then what comes later.

But there's no justice in the case.

There's never justice in the case.

You're asking me to talk about something now

that, uh, I'm uncomfortable talking about.

People are still living.

I have to still live here.

A book came out that, uh,

told about the...

the Recy Taylor situation.

A young black lady

was allegedly raped

by six or seven young white boys.

It incited some people in the northern area of the country.

They began giving some local people here

some heavy harassment.

There was conflict and testimony in that situation.

I don't know rightly or wrongly.

I'm not here to judge.

But, I'm just a historian.

But, uh...

not professionally trained, I might add.

Finally, our local representative in the Legislature

decided to, uh,

to maybe, you know, helped

both sides of the situation

calm down.

He had an Act introduced in the Alabama Legislature,

officially giving Recy Taylor an apology.

[Crystal Feimster] Often times, the cases like Recy Taylor

seems like a break from tradition

because we've ignored those stories.

We've refused to hear those voices.

In the end, what makes her story

is these connections to Rosa Parks

and these longer histories of black women speaking out.

On the 5th of December 1955,

a fine, dignified,

disciplined, courageous seamstress from this community

sitting down on a bus.

Sister Rosa Parks with dignity and discipline,

said in substance that the cup of endurance has run over.

I can take it no longer.

Martin Luther, back in the 16th century, who said,

"Here I stand and I can do none other, so help be God."

It was Rosa Parks, on the 1st of December, who said,

"Here I sit and I can do none other, so help me God."

[Crystal Feimster] If we go back to those images from that time period,

images that are of Martin,

you know, the speaking and with his beautiful voice,

who do we see in those images?

We see women, black women

walking, walking, pounding the pavement.

We see black women in the churches

with the fans, singing.

So, that the women are there.

And the women have always been there.

And they're gonna remain there, right?

The shock troops are on the ground.

They're educating their daughters on how to stay safe

when they work in these homes.

They're pressing charges.

Like, they don't stop doing

what they've been doing.

But, we can't see them

because the light is on Martin, it's on the man.

It's not surprising that

public transportation became a battleground

for black women particularly.

Before Jim Crow South,

a lot of train stations didn't actually have bathrooms

for people of color.

We often think, okay, well, there is the black one

and the white one.

But you didn't build four bathrooms in a train station.

There was usually two, a male and a female.

And so black women, middle class black women

in their fancy dress have to use a bathroom.

Where are they gonna go?

They go around the building,

they go in the woods.

And it's a way to kind of say,

"Look at these people, look at this woman,

she's peeing on the side of the road,

or she's peeing in the bushes.

This is not a respectable woman."

When black women paid for a first class ticket

trying to get into the ladies cars,

they were often physically manhandled,

thrown off the trains, beaten once they've gotten off the trains.

It was a way of saying that you're not a woman

and we will not treat you as a woman.

[Danielle L. McGuire] The entire boycott is rooted

in the defense of women like Recy Taylor.

And is propelled by black women

who had to endure the most horrific treatment on the buses.

Without those women there's no Bus Boycott.

I mean, they are the ones...

They make up 80% of the Montgomery City Lines ridership.

So, without them, who's gonna walk?

Who's gonna stay off the buses?

And without the Bus Boycott, I mean, we could

go into this long

'what if,' of history

but without the Bus Boycott,

there's no demonstration

of how non-violent social revolution happens.

And how powerful it can be.

How a boycott

can bring the cradle of the confederacy to its knees.

It's not about where you sit.

It's about being able to

go on public transportation and being sure that you're not gonna be molested.

What does freedom mean?

If you can't walk down the street

without being touched inappropriately or slapped,

or brutalized.

What does it mean?

If you could vote, or you could sit in a theater,

it means very little.

So, the buses are about a struggle for bodily integrity

led by women, organized by women

and really made possible

by the women who rode the buses every day

and then when they decided not to ride them,

the women who walked every day.

♪ Who's that yonder Dressed in white ♪

♪ Let my people go ♪

♪ Looked like the children Of the Israelite ♪

♪ Let my people go ♪

♪ Go tell it on the mountain ♪

♪ Over the hills And everywhere ♪

♪ Go tell it on the mountain ♪

♪ To let my people go ♪

[Danielle L. McGuire] These movements that we know about

didn't start because someone wanted to sit

at a lunch counter,

or go to a movie,

or sit at the front of the bus.

They are almost always rooted

in the protection of black womanhood.

[all singing]

If we trace the roots of all these campaigns,

what we see are black women fighting for the right

to move through the world unmolested.

["This Bitter Earth" playing]

♪ This bitter earth ♪

♪ Well, what a fruit it bears ♪

♪ Ooh... ♪

It is this sort of rite of passage

where young southern white boys

hunted for a young black girl.

[Crystal Feimster] Their behavior

was that black women

would be happy to sleep with a white man.

Under slavery there was no way

that a black woman could not consent.

These young men believed

that Recy Taylor would be

a consenting partner

and if she wasn't

that they would force that consent

with a gun to her head.

I mean, I guess what I often think is

that they didn't see her.

In the sense that they really did not see her.

That she was an idea

of what black women are.

That they are all prostitutes.

And, uh,

and that they had a right to her body, right?

And, of course, I keep seeing this young

frightened woman who has a daughter and a mother

and a husband at home.

Um...

If they couldn't see her,

in the way that she needed to be seen,

because how could they have,

you know, how could they have brutalized her in this way?

It just doesn't...

I mean, so, as a scholar

I can see all the pieces,

how white supremacy works,

how sexism works and patriarchy, but,

at the end of the day you think, okay,

these are six boys

and a woman.

Like, where is the humanity?

♪ Too soon you're old ♪

♪ But while a voice ♪

♪ Within me cries ♪

♪ I'm sure someone May answer my call ♪

♪ And this bitter earth ♪

[Alma Daniels] All six of 'em,

what they did to her,

they didn't need to live.

And then what they, what happened to them

afterwards

was,

well, a good thing 'cause someone had tragical death.

They died tragical deaths.

And so, it's just good for them for what they did to her.

And just thank God she is still around.

She is still here.

♪ This bitter earth ♪

♪ Oh, this bitter earth ♪

♪ What good is love ♪

♪ Mm-hmm, that no one shares? ♪

♪ And if my life ♪

[Recy Taylor] Many ladies got raped.

♪ Is like the dust ♪

The people there didn't seem like them

weren't concerned about what happened to me

and then tried to do nothin' about it.

I can't help but tell the truth

of what they done to me.

♪ What good am I? ♪

[Recy Taylor] They could have killed me anyway.

There was time I knew they could have killed me with their gun.

The Lord was just with me that night.

["Hush-A-Bye" playing]

♪ Hush-a-bye ♪

♪ Don't you cry ♪

♪ Go to sleep my little baby ♪

♪ When you wake ♪

♪ You shall have ♪

♪ All the pretty Little horses ♪

♪ Black and bays ♪

♪ Dapples and grays ♪

♪ All the pretty Little horses ♪

♪ Way down yonder On the meadow ♪

♪ Lies a poor little lambie ♪

♪ Bees and butterflies ♪

♪ Picking out its eyes ♪

♪ Poor little thing's Crying mami ♪

♪ Blacks and bays ♪

♪ Dapples and grays ♪

♪ All the pretty Little horses ♪

♪ Sister of my tears ♪

♪ Sister of my cries ♪

♪ Hand in hand We stand as one ♪

♪ We push we reach we rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ Hand in hand We stand as one ♪

♪ We push we reach we rise ♪

♪ Sister of my tears ♪

♪ Sister of my cries ♪

♪ Hand in hand We stand as one ♪

♪ We push we reach we rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ Hand in hand We stand as one ♪

♪ We push we reach we rise ♪

♪ A mother's strength ♪

♪ A daughter's love ♪

♪ A sister's will That will be done ♪

♪ Our voices raised Together will ♪

♪ Do the work Of a million guns ♪

♪ Sister of my tears ♪

♪ Sister of my cries ♪

♪ Hand in hand We stand as one ♪

♪ We push we reach we rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ Hand in hand We stand as one ♪

♪ We push we reach we rise ♪

♪ Sister of my tears ♪

♪ Sister of my cries ♪

♪ Hand in hand We stand as one ♪

♪ We push we reach we rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ We rise ♪

♪ Hand in hand We stand as one ♪

♪ We push we reach we rise ♪