This final segment of our #LiftEVERYvoice series features Recy Taylor. About Recy Taylor It is September 3, 1944 in Abbeville, Alabama. After a night of praying and singing at the Rock Hill Holiness Church, Recy Taylor, her friend Fannie Daniel and Daniel’s eighteen-year-old son, West, began their stroll home. As they walk, a green Chevrolet… Read More

This week’s #LiftEVERYVoice segment features Ruby Atee Pigford. Ruby’s History By Airzola Cleaves, Staff Attorney Ruby Atee Pigford—a black teenager—was raped by a “well-to-do oil dealer” named James Lee Perry.  On August 7, 1947, James Perry picked Ruby up after he promised to pay her $0.70 per hour for a babysitting job.  However, instead of taking… Read More

This week’s #LiftEVERYVoice segment highlights Harriet Ann Jacobs, an African-American writer who escaped from slavery and was later freed.  Jacobs is best known for writing the revolutionary autobiographical novel, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, one of the first books to address the struggle for freedom by female slaves, and explore their struggles with sexual abuse and their… Read More

This week’s #LiftEVERYvoice segment features Joan Little, an African-American woman who was the first woman in United States history to be acquitted using the defense that she used deadly force to resist sexual assault. Her experience changed the course of history and helped fuel the civil rights, feminist and prisoners’ rights movements.   Joan’s History By Azriela Reed,… Read More

This week’s #ListEVERYvoice segment highlights Betty Jean Owens, an African American woman who was brutally raped by four white men in Tallahassee, Florida in 1959. Betty’s History On May 2, 1959, four African American students at Florida A & M were forced out of their car, at knife and gunpoint, by four white men. The two African American males… Read More

This week’s #LiftEVERYvoice segment features Emmett Tilll, a 14-year-old African-American boy who was tortured and killed after being accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi in 1955. This event caused widespread outrage and inspired many to open public discourse about the mistreatment of African Americans in the south and beyond.   “I thought of Emmett… Read More

This week’s #LiftEVERYvoice segment highlights Lena Baker, a survivor who was convicted of capital murder of her white employer, Ernest Knight. “What I done, I did in self-defense, or I would have been killed myself. Where I was I could not overcome it. God has forgiven me. I have nothing against anyone. I picked cotton… Read More

This week’s #LiftEVERYvoice segment highlights Ruby Jackson, a survivor whose case has been considered a landmark trial in the struggle for civil rights as she was the first black woman to testify against a white man’s sexual abuse and paternity of their child.    Ruby’s History By Alexis, Medical Advocate in Baton Rouge Ruby Jackson McCollum… Read More

Why #LiftEVERYvoice STAR® recognizes that the intersection of sexual violence and racism is embedded in history. Centuries of sexual abuse against Black bodies are glossed over, omitted, or muted. Survivors who were brave enough to speak out were silenced by society, rarely receiving justice. Black women and men who stepped up to speak their truth with… Read More