A vital new film reveals how women shaped the… | Little White Lies

A vital new film reveals how women shaped the civ­il rights movement

09 Apr 2018

Words by Amandas Ong

A black-and-white portrait of a woman wearing a checked shirt and hat with a veil.
A black-and-white portrait of a woman wearing a checked shirt and hat with a veil.
The Rape of Recy Tay­lor is a bold tes­ta­ment to female activism.

One warm Sep­tem­ber evening in 1944, six white men accost­ed an African-Amer­i­can share­crop­per at gun­point in Abbeville, Alaba­ma, and gang raped her over sev­er­al hours. Despite speak­ing out against her attack­ers and gar­ner­ing sup­port across the coun­try, in par­tic­u­lar from Rosa Parks, Recy Tay­lor nev­er saw jus­tice served in her life­time. The sher­iff of Abbeville tried to intim­i­date advo­cates of Taylor’s case into jet­ti­son­ing their efforts, while the all-white local grand jury refused to indict the men who raped her.

Tay­lor is emblem­at­ic of the years of unrecord­ed sex­u­al vio­lence and trau­ma that lie at the grotesque heart of racial pol­i­tics in Amer­i­ca. She made an unprece­dent­ed move in nam­ing her rapists, since such sex­u­al assaults hap­pened to oth­er African-Amer­i­can women reg­u­lar­ly at the time but were unre­port­ed or ignored. Now, her lega­cy is being explored in a new doc­u­men­tary by Nan­cy Buirs­ki, who also direct­ed The Lov­ing Sto­ry in 2011, about one couple’s remark­able cru­sade to get inter­ra­cial mar­riage decrim­i­nalised in the 60s.

The Rape of Recy Tay­lor explores the ways in which its tit­u­lar char­ac­ter fol­lowed a long line of women – from Rosa Parks to Claudette Colvin – in shap­ing a more egal­i­tar­i­an soci­ety for African-Amer­i­cans. Though the likes of Mar­tin Luther King Jr and Mal­colm X inspired a gen­er­a­tion of black Amer­i­cans with their words, it was black women who car­ried out some of the most impor­tant cam­paigns of the civ­il rights era, tire­less­ly prepar­ing meals for peace­ful protests at seg­re­gat­ed lunch coun­ters and assist­ing with var­i­ous out­reach programmes.

Buirski’s film is based on Danielle McGuire’s 2010 book At the Dark End of the Street’, which traces the his­to­ry of sex­u­al vio­lence com­mit­ted against black women by white men. It was because Recy Tay­lor attract­ed the atten­tion of the NAACP [The Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Col­ored Peo­ple], in par­tic­u­lar Rosa Parks, that we know of her,” says Buirs­ki. Rosa Parks her­self didn’t come out of nowhere – it was her expe­ri­ences meet­ing women like Recy and hear­ing their sto­ries that pushed her to become the leader of the Mont­gomery Bus Boycott.”

Shin­ing exam­ples of African-Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture by Toni Mor­ri­son and Octavia E But­ler demon­strate how the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion and degra­da­tion of the black female body is a prac­tice that dates back to the time of insti­tu­tion­alised slav­ery. In cin­e­ma, how­ev­er, rep­re­sen­ta­tion of this par­tic­u­lar issue has been most­ly restrict­ed to race films” by black direc­tors for black audi­ences, includ­ing Oscar Micheaux’s With­in Our Gates from 1920. The Rape of Recy Tay­lor is spe­cial for this rea­son: inter­spersed with scenes tak­en from these race films” and accom­pa­nied by a sear­ing sound­track sung by Dinah Wash­ing­ton and Fan­nie Lou Hamer, it is a respect­ful trib­ute to the rich­ness of black cul­tur­al his­to­ry in America.

As a white woman delv­ing into sto­ries about racism in Amer­i­ca, Buirs­ki knew that the thorny issues of nar­ra­tive author­i­ty and priv­i­lege would nat­u­ral­ly arise in the mak­ing of her doc­u­men­tary. White peo­ple are com­plic­it in the race tragedy of the Unit­ed States,” she reflects, and to not address our role as the cause of racial vio­lence in the US makes us con­tin­u­al­ly guilty. To be able to actu­al­ly meet Recy and her fam­i­ly, and for them to entrust me with her sto­ry, was a huge honour.”

Trav­el­ling to Abbeville, the small town in Alaba­ma where the rape occurred, Buirs­ki takes her place with­in the nar­ra­tive as a silent observ­er, allow­ing her sub­jects to dis­cuss their per­son­al expe­ri­ences with Taylor’s case. The first half of the film is dom­i­nat­ed by inter­views with Taylor’s sib­lings, Robert Cor­bitt and Alma Daniels. As they describe their mem­o­ries of what hap­pened to their sis­ter and the shame­ful attempts by the white com­mu­ni­ty in Abbeville to cov­er up the crime, one is struck by their poise and soul­ful dig­ni­ty in the face of such a heinous act.

Cor­bitt has made it his life’s work to expose the injus­tice inflict­ed upon his sis­ter, who died in Decem­ber last year. Yet if he bears any vit­ri­ol towards her assailants, it is nev­er once pal­pa­ble on screen. Towards the end of the doc­u­men­tary, he men­tions hav­ing enquired about their lives in recent years, but makes it clear that he would nev­er direct­ly con­front them. Due to her poor health at the time of film­ing, Taylor’s per­son­al account is only heard through a voiceover at the begin­ning, but in one of the final scenes, we see her being helped into her seat from a wheel­chair, her gaze sto­ic and calm. The self-pos­ses­sion of Tay­lor and her sib­lings is astound­ing and in Buirski’s words, Bib­li­cal”.

But what’s also Bib­li­cal is the sin­ful ugli­ness that has poi­soned Abbeville due to its repeat­ed refusal of its inhab­i­tants to rec­on­cile them­selves ful­ly with the past. There’s an abom­inable irony in the fact that Taylor’s fam­i­ly shares its last name with Lewey Cor­bitt, the sher­iff who tried to silence her, because his ances­tors enslaved theirs. Cor­bitt is now deceased, though Buirs­ki agrees that he can be seen as a fore­run­ning sym­bol of police vio­lence in Amer­i­ca. The inter­views with the sib­lings of the men accused of rap­ing Tay­lor are uncom­fort­able to watch. They refer repeat­ed­ly to the mil­i­tary achieve­ments of their broth­ers, and one is led to won­der about the rela­tion­ship between tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty and war.

Despite the grim­ness of its sub­ject mat­ter, the film ends on a some­what opti­mistic note, dom­i­nat­ed by archival footage of black women’s activists in Amer­i­ca. The most emo­tion­al moment, how­ev­er, arrives dur­ing an inter­view with Crys­tal Feim­ster, a Yale Uni­ver­si­ty asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of African Amer­i­can stud­ies. For just a cou­ple of sec­onds, her voice quiv­ers and her own feel­ings about Taylor’s case become evi­dent to the cam­era. I mean, as a schol­ar, I can see all the pieces, how racism works, how sex­ism works. But at the end of the day, you just think… these are six boys, and here’s just one woman. Where is the humanity?”

It’s a ques­tion worth think­ing about in light of the recent resur­gence of white suprema­cy in Amer­i­ca. Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in his book We Were Eight Years in Pow­er’ that the Oba­ma years lulled Amer­i­cans into a false sense of secu­ri­ty about being in a post-racial soci­ety, and Trump has proven these assump­tions to be gross­ly mis­guid­ed. This may be America’s dis­mal real­i­ty, but Buirs­ki urges us to con­sid­er that Taylor’s lega­cy is that of insur­mount­able courage, which con­tin­ues to define the civ­il rights move­ment today.

Women every­where, begin­ning from the Com­mit­tee of Equal Jus­tice for Recy Tay­lor, have always ral­lied for and put pres­sure on soci­ety to keep edu­cat­ing itself and change for the bet­ter,” Buirs­ki says. Taylor’s rapists may have escaped con­vic­tion, but a small vic­to­ry was won when, in 2011, the Alaba­ma State Leg­is­la­tion apol­o­gised to her for its fail­ure to pro­tect her. I can’t help but tell the truth of what they done to me,” she mus­es in the film. With her sto­ry final­ly get­ting the atten­tion it deserves, per­haps it is not fool­ish to be san­guine about women’s activism shin­ing through in today’s cli­mate of big­otry and hatred.

The Rape of Recy Tay­lor screens at the East End Film Fes­ti­val on Sat­ur­day 21 April. Tick­ets are avail­able at eventbrite​.co​.uk

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