Alrutheus Ambush Taylor

Alrutheus Ambush Taylor
Born	(1893-11-22)November 22, 1893
Died	June 4, 1954(1954-06-04) (aged 60)
Spouses	Harriet Ethel Wilson ​ ​ (m. 1919; died 1941)​ Catherine Brummell Buchanan Taylor ​ ​ (m. 1943)​
Academic background
Education	University of Michigan (BA) Harvard University (MA, PhD)
Academic work
Discipline	American History
Sub-discipline	Reconstruction 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

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] He met his wife, Harriet Ethel Wilson, while they were at university. She was president of the original Epsilon Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated at the University of Michigan in 1916. He became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha member through the Epsilon chapter at the University of Michigan as well. She died in a car crash on August 19, 1941. Taylor later established the Harriet Wilson Taylor Scholarship in her honor.[6] His second wife was Catherine Brummell Buchanan Taylor; they married on September 9, 1943, and had five children.[8] 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

• The Negro in South Carolina During the Reconstruction
• The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia
• The Negro in Tennessee, 1865-1880
• "Negro Congressmen a Generation After"
• "The Movement of Negroes from the East to the Gulf States from 1830 to 1850"

References

1. 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. 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. 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.
8. Alpha Phi, Alpha (Spring 1917). "Personals". The Sphinx. 3 (2): 28.