Early life
Taylor was born in slavery on a plantation nearFirst Cleveland administration
Although Taylor, like most African Americans at the time, initially supported Republican candidates and campaigned for Kansas Republican gubernatorial candidate John Martin in 1884, he was disappointed at the lack of patronage positions Republicans offered blacks. In 1884 he began publishing a newspaper, “in the interests of democracy,” and in 1886 ran for local office in Wyandotte County as an independent. In 1887, Cleveland appointed Taylor U.S. Minister to Liberia. He stayed in Liberia only five months, claiming he had returned to campaign for Cleveland’s re-election, although he later made statements strongly critical of Liberian politics, and of the emigration schemes of the American Colonization Society. In the run-up to the 1888 presidential election, Taylor participated in founding the National Negro Democratic League at a meeting in Saint Louis, together with Herbert A. Clark and J. Milton Turner. The primary purpose of the League, according to Bruce Mouser, was to prepare lists of African American candidates for “high level patronage positions” in the event of a Democratic administration. In the same year, Taylor gave speeches at the Kansas and Missouri state Democratic conventions and was elected as an alternate in the Kansas delegation to the national Democratic convention in St. Louis, “the first and only Negro ever sent to a Democratic National convention,” according to one contemporary account. Taylor campaigned for Cleveland’s re-election in severalCleveland interregnum
After Cleveland’s defeat, Taylor settled in Atlanta, where he built up a large legal practice; a contemporary newspaper account described him as the first black lawyer in the history of Atlanta to appear in city court as an attorney. In 1889, he published a lengthy pamphlet, ''Whites and Blacks, or The Question Settled'', which criticized the loyalty of African Americans to the Republican party and argued that blacks in the South would only achieve civil liberty by cultivating better relations with white southerners: “The Southern white men,” Taylor wrote,” will give the Negro all he merits.” In the following year, however, Taylor returned to Kansas, perhaps due to the deteriorating racial climate in Georgia as well as the changing political scene in Kansas with the rise of the Populist Party. He became editor of a black newspaper inSecond Cleveland administration
Cleveland nominated Taylor as Minister to Bolivia in September, 1893. After almost five months of delay, the Senate refused to confirm the nomination, claiming the Bolivians would not accept a black representative. Cleveland then nominated Taylor to be Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, also a highly controversial nomination since District Democrats wished one of their own to have the position. Taylor’s nomination was ultimately confirmed by the Senate, owing partly to the intervention of the venerablePost-Cleveland life
Following the Democratic defeat in 1896, Taylor practiced law for a time in Baltimore before becoming dean of the Law department at Morris Brown College in Atlanta. He continued to practice law, give speeches, and edit a newspaper, the ''Southern Appeal'', until his health went into decline. He died in May, 1899, and was interred in Baltimore. Taylor’s personal relationship with Grover Cleveland became the subject of controversy in 1904 when a Republican congressman from Kansas, attempting to counter Democratic criticisms of Theodore Roosevelt for dining with Booker T. Washington, claimed that Cleveland had dined with Taylor. Weeks of claims and counter-claims followed, including a letter from Cleveland himself denying he had ever lunched with Taylor. There was suspicion that Cleveland was thinking of running for a third presidential term and wanted to curry favor with white southerners, for many of whom "social equality" between blacks and whites was a taboo. As late as 1936, a white Democratic politician from Kansas City, Joseph B. Shannon, on the occasion of the dedication of a series of portraits of District of Columbia Recorders of Deeds, praised Taylor for his “courage and convictions”: “It took courage for a colored man to take the stand that Taylor took at that time,” Shannon said. “And I want to say here that he had that courage, coupled with an intelligence and independence of thought that in my opinion links his name with such men of his race as Booker Washington, Paul Dunbar, Paul Robeson, Countee Cullen and others whose names have brought honor to the Negro race of the country.”References
Further reading
*"Admitted to Bail." Washington ''Evening Star'', March 8, 1895, p. 12. *Charlotte (NC) ''News'', January 12, 1889, p. 2. *“Death of C.H.J. Taylor,” ''The Broad Ax'' (Salt Lake City), June 6, 1899, p. 1. *"Discussed Taylor's Case." ''Kansas City Times'', May 9, 1894, p. 1. *"Former Kansas Recorder lauded by J.B. Shannon." ''Plaindealer'' (Kansas City, Kansas). December 25, 1936, p. 2. *"Keeping His Record Straight." ''Washington Evening Star'', April 13, 1904, p. 4. *Mouser, Bruce. ''For Labor, Race, and Liberty: George Edwin Taylor, His Historic Run for the White House, and the Making of Independent Black Politics''. 2011: University of Wisconsin Press. *Munro, Ian H. "C.H.J. Taylor and Black Empowerment in Post-Reconstruction Kansas, 1877-1887," ''Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains'', Vol 40, No. 3 (Autumn, 2017), pp. 202–219. *"Munro, Ian H. ''C.H.J. Taylor and the Rhetoric of Race in Post-Reconstruction America''. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023. *“Short Review of the Career of the late C.H.J. Taylor and Favorable Mention of his Widow, Mrs. Julia A. Taylor.” ''The Broad Ax'' (Salt Lake City). January 2, 1904, p. 2. *Smith, J. Clay. ''Emancipation: the Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844-1944''. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. *Taylor, Nikki. ''America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark''. University Press of Kentucky, 2013. *"To Bounce Negro Taylor." ''Wichita Daily Eagle'', August 24, 1894, p. 1. *Woods, Randall B. “C.H.J. Taylor and the Movement for Black Political Independence, 1882-1896. ''The Journal of Negro History'', Vol 67, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 122–135.External links
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, C.H.J. 1857 births 1899 deaths University of Michigan people African-American diplomats African-American journalists 19th-century African-American lawyers 19th-century American lawyers People from Marion, Alabama 19th-century American slaves United States Attorneys for the Northern District of Indiana Alabama Republicans Alabama Democrats Journalists from Alabama District of Columbia Recorders of Deeds 19th-century American diplomats