Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, September 3rd, 1944, Rissie Taylor, a 24-year-old African-American

sharecropper was walking home from church in Abbeyville, Alabama when she

was abducted and raped by six white men. We want to talk about

this story today because Taylor's case and the activism around it would go on to be a

major factor in the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. We also want to talk about this because one of the civil rights workers who was sent by the

N-Double A-C-P to Alabama to organize around this case was a woman by the name of Rosa Parks.

So a name, Riese Taylor, that maybe some folks don't know and a chapter

in the life of Rosa Parks that maybe some folks don't know. Here to discuss it, as always is

Nicole Hemmer of Columbia. Hello

Nicky. Hey Jody. And our guest for this episode is Danielle McGuire historian and

author of At the Dark End of the Street Black Women Rape and

Resistance,

her history of the Civil Rights Movement,

and she writes a lot about the Riese-Taylor case.

So Danielle, thanks for doing this.

Good to be here.

Thanks for having me.

So as I said, there's kind of two parts is the Risey Taylor story and then Rosa Parks's involvement.

Let's focus in on Risey Taylor first.

Danielle, do you want to just describe this attack and then kind of what happened in the immediate aftermath?

...