The past decade has seen plenty of American political firsts,
from the first black president to the first female vice president, but there are many people in
America's history who have since been forgotten that paved the way for these historic changes.
One groundbreaking activist working for equal rights was George Edwin Taylor.
So who was he, and why don't we learn about him in history class?
George Edwin Taylor was the first African American to run for president as the candidate
of a national political party. He was the nominee for the National Liberty Party, also known as the
National Negro Liberty Party. Taylor ran against Teddy Roosevelt in the 1904 presidential election.
A 1957 journal article by Howard H. Bell explains that the National Liberty Party was founded by
abolitionists in 1840 to bring attention to the issues facing current and former slaves. For the
most part, they didn't expect their candidates to get any major slice of the vote — they just wanted
a platform to bring Black rights in front of the nation. Taylor was a gifted speaker and an active
labor rights activist, so he was the perfect man to go up against the charismatic Roosevelt.
So, where did it all begin? George Edwin Taylor was born in Little Rock,
Arkansas, in 1857 as the son of a slave and a free woman of color.
We actually happen to know a lot about his youth — even his exact birthdate, August 4th. Because
he was born to a free woman, George too was considered free due to the laws at the time.
This played a role when Taylor moved north at a young age and got a remarkably good education.
But moving north wasn't exactly a choice — his mother, Amanda Hines, was forced to leave
Arkansas by the Free Negro Expulsion Bill, a law requiring all free Blacks to vacate or else face
re-enslavement after one year. Amanda died of tuberculosis in Illinois when Taylor was just
four or five, leaving the little boy to fend for himself. Bruce S. Mouser details in his book on
Taylor, For Labor, Race, and Liberty, how the boy managed to get from Illinois to Wisconsin
on a paddleboat in 1865 and eventually was taken in by a paddleboat worker, and then by Nathan
Smith and his wife Sarah, who ran a politically active Black farming family. He worked hard,
saved up, and eventually went to Wayland University in Wisconsin from 1877 to 1879.
Unfortunately, his limited finances didn't allow him to complete his formal education
in grammar and language, and he was forced to drop out just a year short of graduation.
Even though he never graduated, George Edwin Taylor had managed to lead an
independent life with a solid education and the support of a strong personal network.
Taylor had no intention of wasting his talents or advantages. He put his education to use as
a writer in 1879, reporting for various local newspapers in La Crosse, Wisconsin,
as well as one in Chicago. His experience with writing and publishing eventually led him to
owning a national magazine the Wisconsin Labor Advocate. This period saw him blossoming into both
an excellent journalist and an agitator for social and economic change among the working classes.
Taylor got married during this period as well, but little is known about his wife,
Mary. By the time Taylor moved to Oskaloosa, Iowa in 1891,
he had established himself as a writer to reckon with and a fierce political force.
Even early on in his life, George Edwin Taylor had already taken an interest in politics.
He was actually more interested in labor policy and workers' rights than racial politics,
and was very active in Midwestern labor unions and organizations at the turn of the century.
His first political office was as a representative for the Wisconsin Union Labor Party,
where he fought for improvements to the lives of the working classes.
By the time Taylor relocated to Iowa, he was fully immersed in Black politics and activism,
starting the Negro Solicitor magazine and standing
as a delegate to several national conventions focused on Black issues.
Though incredibly active in politics for most of his life,
George Edwin Taylor wasn't loyal to a party — he was loyal to his cause,
and whoever would best move it forward. Like many free Blacks of the immediate post-Civil War era,
Taylor started as a Republican — the party of Lincoln, and a very different Republican party
than the one we have today. Taylor even served as a delegate-at-large for Iowa to the Republican
National Convention in 1892. However, the work he and others did at the convention to
advance civil rights was pretty much ignored by the party. Disillusioned and frustrated,
Taylor returned home to Iowa and promptly switched allegiance to the Democratic Party.
BlackPast notes that he led the National Negro Democratic League for several years, agitating
for more representation for African Americans in the Democratic Party. Within the party, he
emerged as a leading light of the movement to pay more attention to every man — regardless of color.
When the Democrats, too, turned out to be less than responsive to issues facing Black Americans,
Taylor abandoned that party and hooked up with the National Liberty Party,
a national third party dedicated specifically to Black rights.
After being active in politics for years, Taylor had started despairing of the
increasing marginalization of Black issues and rights. When he decided to run for president,
it wasn't because he thought he'd win — it was to try to get the spotlight back on Black concerns.
In fact, in 1904, he wrote of African American rights, quote, "We are doomed."
He had good reason to despair. As the Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes, segregation was taking hold,
the Jim Crow laws were repressing freed African Americans throughout the South,
and the rights former slaves had won were disappearing.
It seemed like no one cared about the working man, let alone ex-slaves.
So when the National Liberty Party needed a presidential candidate,
the fiery journalist was ready to step up. He knew he wouldn't win — and,
in fact, because of racist ballot laws, he couldn't even technically run in a bunch of
states — but Taylor had to make an attempt to bring his issues to the national stage.
While the National Liberty Party might have been started by abolitionists, it became George
Edwin Taylor's true political home because of its definition of equal rights and liberty.
Taylor really was an equal-opportunity freedom
fighter. His presidential platform focused on exactly that: equal rights.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
That they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.”
Taylor wasn't the Party's first choice, however. William Thomas Scott, a Black tavern owner and
newspaper editor has that honor, but Scott's business ventures, which often involved liquor
and gambling, eventually prevented him from attaining political office. He served as the
leader of the National Liberty Party, but unpaid fines related to past business dealings landed
him in jail after he began campaigning, leaving Taylor as the go-to candidate.
As BlackPast highlights, his campaign had a focus on the universal right to vote,
federal protection of equal rights, national anti-lynching laws,
equal representation in the military, and federal pensions for all former slaves.
Beyond that, though, he campaigned for residents of Washington, DC, to have full voting powers
and called for freedom for Puerto Ricans and Filipinos as well, as the Encyclopedia
of Arkansas points out. These are incredibly progressive issues today, let alone in 1904,
and they brought his pursuit of equal rights for all to a broader audience than ever before.
No matter how fiery, flamboyant, and gifted George Edwin Taylor was, he knew that there
was no hope for his campaign to be treated as anything other than a sideshow to the
inevitable election of Teddy Roosevelt in 1904. He gave a newspaper interview where he stated,
"Yes, I know most white folks take me as a joke [...] but I want to tell you the colored man
is beginning to see a lot of things that the white folks do not give him credit for seeing.
He's beginning to see that he has got to take care of his own interests,
and what's more, that he has the power to do it."
Taylor received only about 2,000 votes in the national election, per NPR,
even though estimates at the time thought that total may have been as high as 65,000 votes.
Taylor's name didn't appear on any ballots, the party was not endorsed by any newspaper,
and there's no clear record of the number of votes today.
But Taylor did succeed in his aim of highlighting the U.S. populations
who were being consigned to second-class citizenship. With that goal accomplished,
Taylor retired from politics and moved to Ottumwa, Iowa, and then to Florida,
where he occasionally returned to politics and raised poultry, but also resumed his
career as a journalist, managing the Promotion Publication Company until his death in 1925.
In 1912, Taylor even attended a state convention of Progressive Republicans to support the return
of Teddy Roosevelt for a third term after the one-term presidency of William Howard Taft. While
Roosevelt lost the election to Woodrow Wilson, Taylor had no qualms about supporting the very
candidate who'd defeated him years earlier. Taylor went on to march in Wilson's inaugural parade.
For a supposedly "failed" presidential candidate, George Edwin Taylor left
a strong legacy. Though few remembered his losing candidacy, his work as a labor rights
promoter and Black rights activist paved the way for improvements all over the US.
As NPR points out, prior to the Civil War, Black people could only vote in
five New England states and New York, and even after the Emancipation Proclamation,
Americans of different backgrounds were far from equal in how they were treated. While Taylor had
seen himself as equal to any man during his time as a labor rights activist in Wisconsin,
others sidelined him and attempted to shove him out of leadership positions,
as his biographer recounts. Taylor's lifelong conviction that no one's economic status,
ethnic background, or place of residence should determine what they were able to do
with their lives was truly progressive, and his pursuit of equal rights for all paved the way
for later activists and politicians to push through the Equal Rights Amendment and more.
By running for office and putting Black issues front and center, George Edwin
Taylor paved the way for later African American politicians to make their groundbreaking moves.
In fact, as his biographer relates in an article on HistoryNewsNetwork,
Taylor shares a number of coincidental attributes with Barack Obama,
including sharing a birthday and running for president at the same age.
Given his impassioned speeches, polished appearance, brilliant writing, and lifelong
activism, it's shocking that more people don't remember the life and work of George Edwin Taylor.
But even if he doesn't have the fame he rightly deserves, he still broke down barriers for Blacks
in politics and helped make today's activist culture possible. Taylor lived and breathed
the ideas of Black liberation and asserted that once Black lives and issues were taken seriously,
we could tackle issues of social inequality and equal rights for all,
creating the kind of America that we all deserve ... one that values nothing more than life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.
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