Oprah Winfrey Visits Recy Taylor's Grave After Golden Globes Tribute

“I don’t believe in coincidences, but if I did this would be a powerful one,” Oprah wrote on Instagram

By Elyse Dupre Jan 24, 2018 6:13 PMTags

A post shared by Oprah (@oprah) on

Oprah Winfrey made an unexpected visit to the grave of Recy Taylor just weeks after she referenced her during her 2018 Golden Globes speech.   

The talk show legend captured the touching experience on Instagram Tuesday.

"I don't believe in coincidences, but if I did this would be a powerful one," she captioned a picture of her standing in front of the tombstone. "On assignment for @60minutes I end up in the town of Abbeville where #RecyTaylor suffered injustice, endured and recently died. (GGspeech). To be able to visit her grave so soon after ‘speaking her name' sharing her story, a woman I never knew. Feels like [prayer hand emoji, cloud emoji, heart emoji]."

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Winfrey told Taylor's story upon accepting the Cecil B. deMille Award on Jan. 10, telling the audience Taylor was "a name I know, and I think you should know, too."

As Winfrey noted during her speech, Taylor was walking home from church in Abbeville, Alabama back in 1944 when she was abducted and raped by six white men. Even though the men threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone, Winfrey told the audience, she reported the incident to the NAACP, where Rosa Parks worked on her case.

Winfrey then told the audience the men were never prosecuted and that Taylor had recently died.

"She lived as we all have lived too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men," Winfrey said. 

She then related Taylor's story to the Time's Up movement.

"For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men," she said. "But their time is up."

After the audience rose to their feet to give Winfrey a standing ovation, she said, "And 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."

Watch the video to hear the full speech.