Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Recy Taylor, a black Alabama woman whose rape by six white men in 1944 drew national attention, died Thursday at age 97.
Taylor's family said she died at a nursing home in Abbeville, Ala.
Taylor, the subject of a new documentary, The Rape of Recy Taylor, was one of many black rape victims during the Jim Crow era.
Taylor's case was taken to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the investigation was led by Rosa Parks -- the civil rights icon who famously refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Ala.
Like Parks, Taylor is credited by some with helping begin the civil rights movement.
Taylor spent most of her adult life in central Florida. Her family moved her back to Alabama at age 93. In 2011, the Alabama legislature issued an apology for "its failure to prosecute her attackers."
Taylor would have turned 98 on Sunday.
