For Labor, Race, and Liberty

by Mouser, Bruce L.

• ISBN13: 9780299249144
• ISBN10: 029924914X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-21
• Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Summary

More than one hundred years before Barack Obama, George Edwin Taylor made presidential history. Born in the antebellum South to a slave and a freed woman, Taylor became the first African American ticketed as a political partyrs"s nominee for president of the United States, running against Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Orphaned as a child at the peak of the Civil War, Taylor spent several years homeless before boarding a Mississippi riverboat that dropped him in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Taken in by an African American farm family, Taylor attended a private school and eventually rose to prominence as the owner/editor of a labor newspaper and as a vocal leader in Wisconsinrs"s Peoplers"s Party. At a time when many African Americans felt allegiance to the Republican Party for its support of abolition, Taylorrs"s sympathy with the labor cause drew him first to the national Democratic Party and then to an African American party, the newly formed National Liberty Party, which in 1904 named him its presidential candidate. Bruce L. Mouser follows Taylorrs"s life and career in Arkansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Florida, giving life to a figure representing a generation of African American idealists whose initial post-slavery belief in political and social equality in America gave way to the despair of the Jim Crow decades that followed.

Author Biography

Bruce L. Mouser is professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xix
List of Abbreviations	p. xxiii
Introduction	p. 3
From Orphaned Black to Printer's Devil: Taylor's Early Years in "God's Country"	p. 14
Labor Agitator, Newspaper Editor, and Political Novice: Schools of Hard Knocks	p. 28
Emergence of a Black Activist: Succeeding in the African American World	p. 57
Taylor as the National Democrat: Black and Equal	p. 86
Taylor's Campaign to Become President: A Duty to Himself and His Race	p. 107
Escape to a Warm Place: Retreat and Reconstruct	p. 135
Conclusion	p. 146
Taylor's Interview with the Sun after the 1904 Election	p. 155
Election Data for Nine Political Parties and Candidates in the 1904 Election	p. 159
Chart of George Edwin Taylor's Life	p. 161
Notes	p. 167
Bibliography	p. 219
Index	p. 241
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