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Elizabeth Dowling Taylor

Biography

Elizabeth Dowling Taylor

Elizabeth Dowling Taylor received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Over a 22-year career in museum education and historical research, she was director of interpretation at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and director of education at James Madison's Montpelier. Most recently a fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Taylor is now an independent scholar and lecturer. She lives in Barboursville, Virginia.

Elizabeth Dowling Taylor

Books by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor

The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era
by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor - Biography, History, Nonfiction

In the wake of the Civil War, Daniel Murray, born free and educated in Baltimore, was in the vanguard of Washington, D.C.’s black upper class. Though Murray and other black elite of his time were primed to assimilate into the cultural fabric as Americans first and people of color second, their prospects were crushed by Jim Crow segregation and the capitulation to white supremacist groups by the government, which turned a blind eye to their unlawful --- often murderous --- acts. Elizabeth Dowling Taylor traces the rise, fall and disillusionment of upper-class African Americans, revealing that they were a representation not of hypothetical achievement but what could be realized by African Americans through education and equal opportunities.