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=Alrutheus Ambush Taylor=

Alrutheus Ambush Taylor (November 22, 1891 – June 4, 1954) was an African-American historian, professor, and dean at Fisk University. During his career, Taylor performed foundational work on the role of African Americans in the Reconstruction period, especially in the states of South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. His work influenced many later historians, including W.E.B. Du Bois, and offered the first significant challenges to the Dunning School of Reconstruction History.

Early life and education
Taylor was born on November 22, 1893 to Lewis and Lucy (Johnson) Taylor in the Washington DC, neighborhood of Anacostia. The youngest of nine children, his early childhood was one of poverty, spanning the years of the Panic of 1893 depression. As a child, he attended segregated public schools, the James A. Garfield Grammar School, and from 1906-1910, the Armstrong Manual Training School, a vocational high school. At Armstrong, Taylor excelled in Mathematics and was awarded a scholarship to the University of Michigan.

Taylor majored in Mathematics but his passion was for History. He completed nearly as much coursework in History as in his major field of study. As an undergraduate, he was active in Alpha Phi Alpha, one of the earliest black fraternities. From 1914-1915, Taylor interrupted his studies to teach English at the Tuskegee Institute. After graduation, Taylor moved to New York City where he was employed as a Social Worker with the National Urban League assisting black migrants from 1917 to 1918.

In 1919, Taylor left the Urban League to take a position as Membership and Social Secretary for the Twelfth Street Young Men's Christian Association in Washington, D.C, under John Warren Davis. When Davis accepted the presidency of West Virginia Collegiate Institute later that year he took Taylor with him. There Taylor was employed as an instructor in Mathematics and Economics, along with his wife Harriet (who accepted a position as a Critic Teacher in the English Department).

The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History
met and became associated with Carter G. Woodson

Books

 * The Negro in South Carolina During the Reconstruction (Washington, DC: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1924)
 * The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia (Washington, DC: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1926)
 * The Negro in Tennessee, 1865-1880 (Washington, DC: The Associated Publishers, Inc., 1941)
 * A Study of the Community Life of the Negro Youth (co-authored with H. Liston Davis, John P. Whittaker, and Charles S. Johnson) (Newport News: Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes, 1941)
 * Fisk University, 1866-1951: A Constructive Influence in American Life (unpublished, 1952)

Papers

 * Making West Virginia a Free State (Journal of Negro History, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1921)
 * Negro Congressmen a Generation After (Journal of Negro History, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1922)
 * The Movement of the Negroes from the East to the Gulf States from 1830 to 1850 (Journal of Negro History, Vol. 8, No. 4, 1923)
 * Historians of the Reconstruction (Journal of Negro History, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1938)
 * Trends in Federal Policy Toward the Negro (in The Quest for Political Unity in World History, The American Historical Profession Annual Report, 1942, Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1944)
 * Fisk University and the Nashville Community, 1865-1900 (Journal of Negro History, Vol. 39, No. 2, 1954)