Alrutheus Ambush Taylor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alrutheus Ambush Taylor
Born(1893-11-22)November 22, 1893
DiedJune 4, 1954(1954-06-04) (aged 60)
Spouses
Harriet Ethel Wilson
(m. 1919; died 1941)
Catherine Brummell Buchanan Taylor
(m. 1943)
Academic background
EducationUniversity of Michigan (BA) Harvard University (MA, PhD)
Academic work
DisciplineAmerican History
Sub-disciplineReconstruction history

Alrutheus Ambush Taylor (1893–1954) was a historian from Washington D.C. He was a specialist in the history of blacks and segregation, especially during the Reconstruction Era.[1] The Crisis cited him as a "painstaking scholar and authority on Negro history".[2] An African-American, he taught at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama, at the West Virginia Collegiate Institute in West Virginia, and at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Following a grant from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund, Taylor began researching the role of African Americans in the South during Reconstruction.[3] He authored The Negro in South Carolina During the Reconstruction in 1924, The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia in 1926, and The Negro in Tennessee, 1865-1880 in 1941.[4]

He died at Hubbard Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, on June 4, 1954, at the age of 60.[5][6]

Early life and education[edit]

Taylor was born in Washington, D.C., the youngest of Lewis and Lucy Johnson Taylor's nine children.[7] He enrolled in the University of Michigan in 1910 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics in 1916. Taylor was later rejected from the university's history graduate program by Ulrich B. Phillips, who cited Taylor's undergraduate focus in mathematics.[1] Carter G. Woodson financed Taylor's Master of Arts at Harvard University, where he completed his thesis entitled "The Social Conditions and Treatment of Negroes in South Carolina, 1865-1880" in 1923.[7] Taylor would finish his PhD at Harvard in 1935.[5]

His earliest two published books, The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction in 1924, and The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia, challenged the Dunning School of Reconstruction historiography.[5]

Publications[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Woods, James Pleasant (1969). Alrutheus Ambush Taylor, 1893-1954: segregated historian of Reconstruction. Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
  2. ^ Clifton H. Johnson (November 1971). "Cardoso". The Crisis: 304. ISSN 0011-1422. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
  3. ^ James W. Ivy (July 1941). "Reconstruction in Tennessee". The Crisis: 235. ISSN 0011-1422. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
  4. ^ "Taylor, Alrutheus Ambush (1893-1955)". Blackpast.org. 12 February 2007. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
  5. ^ a b c Franklin, John Hope (1954). "Alrutheus Ambush Taylor". The Journal of Negro History. 39 (3): 240–242. doi:10.1086/JNHv39n3p240. ISSN 0022-2992. JSTOR 2715852. S2CID 149779976.
  6. ^ Mattie McHollin, Lula Brooks, Katherine Harrell, Susie Harris, Jason Harrison, and Vanessa Smith (2009). ""A Guide to the A. A. Taylor Collection, 1923-1954"". Prepared for the Fisk University Archives, Fisk University. Retrieved October 10, 2023.
  7. ^ a b Hall, Gilroy; B, Stephen (1996). "Research as Opportunity: Alrutheus Ambush Taylor, Black Intellectualism, and the Remaking of Reconstruction Historiography, 1893-1954". UCLA Historical Journal. 16.