Recy Taylor, a black Alabama woman, who was a victim of rape by six white men in 1944 that drew national attention, died Thursday at the age of 97, reports said.

Taylor’s death was confirmed by her 81-year-old younger brother Robert Corbitt, who said she died in her sleep at a nursing home in Abbeville, Alabama. He added that Taylor was in good spirits the previous day and her death was sudden. She would have turned 98 on Sunday.

In 1944, Taylor was 24 years old and lived in her hometown Abbeville when she was abducted and raped as she was walking home from a church. She was blindfolded and raped at gunpoint by six white men. Her attackers then left her on the side of the road in an isolated area.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) assigned Rosa Parks to investigate Taylor’s case, and Parks rallied support for justice for Taylor, and began her career as an anti-rape activist. Parks also called out for the prosecution of Taylor’s attackers, none of whom have been ever indicted. Two all-white, all-male grand juries declined to indict the six white men, who also admitted to authorities that they had assaulted her.

Taylor spent most of her adult years in Winter Haven, Florida, however moved back to Abbeville by family members after she started to display signs of dementia. In a 2010 interview, Taylor told the Associated Press that she believed the men who were responsible for attacking her have died, but she still would prefer an apology from officials.

"It would mean a whole lot to me," Taylor said. "The people who done this to me, they can't do no apologizing. Most of them is gone."

Her younger brother Corbitt told the Undefeated that his sister never recovered emotionally from the 1944 attack.

"She would only talk to me," Corbitt said. "That’s why I dug at it so hard. After I retired, I devoted myself to getting something done about it. We did get an apology from the state of Alabama."

The Alabama Legislature passed a resolution apologizing to her in April 2011.

"The Senate gave final approval on a voice vote to a resolution that expresses ‘deepest sympathy and deepest regrets’ to Recy Taylor, now 91 and living in Florida," the Alabama Legislature said in its apology.

Taylor's story became an icon of the sexual violence black women suffered from white men in the South during the civil rights era. Her story is told in "At the Dark End of the Street," a book by Danielle McGuire that was released in September 2010. A documentary was also made on her case, "The Rape of Recy Taylor," which released in 2017.

"It is Recy Taylor and rare other black women like her who spoke up first when danger was greatest," Nancy Buirski, the documentary's director, told NBC News in an email after the news of her death. "It is these strong women's voices of the 40's and early 50's and their efforts to take back their bodies that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and other movements that followed, notably the one we are witnessing today."

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