Uncrowned Community Builders

Jesse Taylor is a little known but pivotal leader in the social justice movement of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. He was a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of Charles and Fanny Hughes Taylor. In the late 1930s, he organized one of the first boycotts, which targeted grocery stores for discriminating against Miles Milk Company, an African American owned concern. The case ended up in the courts at that time.

In 1929, Taylor founded the Progressive Herald Publishing Company which began publishing a newspaper by that name soon thereafter. Zenobia A. Alexander, journalist and editor of a number of local papers, including the Buffalo Criterion and the Buffalo Star, was the managing editor of the Herald beginning in 1937. No copies of the paper appear to have survived. Taylor was also involved in the co-operative grocery movement, was active in union affairs and politics. He was employed as a bricklayer as a master craftsman.

He was the local representative of the civil rights movement founded by A. Philip Randolph in 1940. The March on Washington Movement (MOWM), 1941-1946, organized by activists A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin as a tool to produce a mass march on Washington, D.C., was designed to pressure the U.S. government into desegregating the armed forces and providing fair working opportunities for African Americans.

When President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 in 1941, prohibiting discrimination in the defense industry under contract to federal agencies, Randolph and collaborators called off the march. Randolph continued to promote non-violent actions to advance goals for African Americans. Future civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and other younger men were strongly influenced by Randolph and his ideals and methods.

Taylor also held memberships in the Eaton Benevolent Society and the Rappahoe Lodge, No. 3886 GUOOF. He was a member of Local 45, Bricklayers, Masons, Plasterers AFL and Tile Workers Union. He served as the vice-president of the union from 1932-1934 and frequently represented the local at national conventions.

Taylor was a member of the Socialist Party, which nominated him as a candidate for Erie County 5th Ward Supervisor in 1929. He was said to be the first "Negro" ever nominated to a county assembly post. He was also nominated for city councilman a year prior, also by the Socialist Party. He was cited as the President of the Negro Progressive Club. He was the chairman of the Buffalo contingent to the March on Washington Movement, 1940-48. He was also a member of the 5th Ward Draft Board from 1940-47.

Taylor was also a small businessman. He owned Taylor's Lunch Room, which opened in 1945 and continued to operate up to his death. He was a member of the Michigan Street Baptist Church.

He was married to Sally E. Taylor. He had one daughter, Josephine Booker. Four sisters and three brothers, all of Little Rock, survived him.

He is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, New York.