*She brought national attention to the unsung journey of Recy Taylor earlier this month, and now Oprah Winfrey has paid a personal visit to the late civil rights icon while visiting Alabama.
The TV titan, in the state for a “60 Minutes” assignment, says she ended up at the gravesite in Abbeville by chance, sending local unsuspecting residents into a tizzy.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, but if I did this would be a powerful one,” Winfrey said in an Instagram post. “I end up in the town of Abbeville where #RecyTaylor suffered injustice, endured and recently died.
“To be able to visit her grave so soon after ‘speaking her name,’ sharing her story, a woman I never knew. Feels like love,” she added in the post, which amassed more than 114,000 “likes” in about four hours.
Taylor, a black woman who was brutally raped by six white men in 1944, spent much of her life fighting for justice, but the accused men were never prosecuted. She died on Dec. 28, 2017, at the age of 97.
Winfrey highlighted Taylor’s story while accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the Golden Globes on Jan. 7.
“She lived as we all have lived too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men,” Winfrey said at the awards show, referring to Taylor. “For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up. Their time is up.
“And I just hope — I just hope that Recy Taylor died knowing that her truth, like the truth of so many other women who were tormented in those years, and even now tormented, goes marching on,” she added.
Winfrey speaks with ABC News about the visit to Taylor’s gravesite below:
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