Documentary Sheds Light on the Fight Against Sexual Assault During the Jim Crow Era

February 28, 2020 - San Antonio

By Jade Esteban Estrada - Political Columnist, San Antonio Sentinel

Tonight, San Antonians will have an opportunity to examine the story of an overlooked heroine of the early civil rights movement in the award-winning documentary film The Rape of Recy Taylor by Nancy Buirski. Open to the public, this free screening will take place at 6 p.m. at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. 

On the night of September 3, 1944, Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was walking home with two friends from a service at Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. After being pursued by seven white men in a green Chevrolet, she was kidnapped at gunpoint and then later, sexually assaulted.

Taylor refused to stay silent about the crime and identified a few of the men to the police. The men, however, were not detained. The next day, Taylor’s porch was set on fire by vigilantes. 

When the N.A.A.C.P. learned about the case, they sent their lead rape investigator, a not-yet-famous Rosa Parks, to examine the situation further. Together, Taylor and Parks rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice. The Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor became a national organization and the backing of black luminaries like W.E.B Du Bois, Mary Church Terrell and Langston Hughes helped the case get wider recognition.

The accused men were never indicted. A history of sexual violence against black women, especially in the postwar South, proved that it was risky for African Americans to speak out against white people who were accused of racially-driven crimes. 

Taylor continued to fight for justice long after the 1944 rape, but her story would, for a time, fade into the pages of history as newer campaigns for racial equality took center stage in the years before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..

Decades later, Buirski, who is white, found herself drawn to Taylor’s story. The subject matter was familiar; she had just completed The Loving Story, a 2011 film about the U.S. Supreme Court decision Loving vs. Virginia, the 1967 ruling that invalidated state laws prohibiting interracial marriage. “Race is our American story," Buirski said at a panel discussion at the 2017 New York Film Festival. 

The inspiration to document this hidden account on celluloid was sparked by the inclusion of Taylor’s story in Danielle L. McGuire’s 2010 book, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance - a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power - and, in part, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

A year after McGuire’s book first captured the attention of her readers, there was a grassroots effort to ask the Alabama Legislature - via the social justice website change.org - to formally apologize to Taylor. Soon after, the State of Alabama issued a formal apology for her treatment in the legal system. This apology was presented at the church where she worshipped the night of the crime.

Although the film has garnered mixed reviews since its 2017 premiere, it undeniably gives the historic case renewed consideration in the wake of the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements and sheds light on the black women who paved the way for today’s generation of activists. 

For some, this work may also inspire a re-examination of how Americans once responded to victims of rape, and may even offer a deeper understanding of the subject by providing a an up-close comparison to the #ibelieveher perspective of modernity.

“This film illustrates just some of the ways that women of color have led the fight against sexual assault and sexual harassment," said Sarah Donaldson, employment attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which is co-hosting the event with the Esperanza Center. 

The screening and subsequent discussion on how sexual harassment against women of color can be fought against in the community and in the workplace will take place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center which is located at 922 San Pedro Avenue. This event is free and open to the public.

Jade Esteban Estrada is an Associated Press contributor and also covers politics for the San Antonio Sentinel. Email him at jade@sasentinel.com.