Dorothy Mae Taylor

Dorothy Mae DeLavallade Taylor (August 10, 1928 – August 18, 2000), was the first African-American woman to serve in the Louisiana House of Representatives. From 1971 to 1980, she represented District 20, since renumbered, in her native New Orleans, Louisiana.

Background

Taylor was the youngest of thirteen children born to Charles H. and Mary Jackson Delavallade. Educated in the segregated public schools of New Orleans, she subsequently attended historically black Southern University in the capital city of Baton Rouge.^[1] She was a Head Start teacher at the William J. Guste Elementary School, named for the late state Attorney General William J. Guste. She was also a civil rights activist who organized pickets, sit-ins, and marches. In the late 1950s, she successfully petitioned the New Orleans Public Schools and then the New Orleans Recreation Department to provide equal resources to blacks. In time, schools, playgrounds, and swimming pools were desegregated.^[1]

Taylor was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and numerous other civic and religious groups, such as the St. Marks and Methodist community centers in New Orleans.^[2] In 1948, Taylor married Johnny Taylor, Jr., and the couple had seven children.^[2] She was active for years in the Mt. Zion Methodist Church. She resided at 1300 Perdido Street.^[1]

Political career

A deputy clerk in the New Orleans Civil District Court, Taylor won a special election in 1971 to succeed Ernest Nathan Morial, who became the first black juvenile court judge in Orleans Parish.

After her election to the state house in which was uneasy at being the only black female member of the body, Taylor said that she "prayed and prayed … and the answer to my fear came to me in church one Sunday morning when the choir began to sing, ‘If Jesus goes with me I’ll go anywhere.’ It was then that I knew that God had a plan and purpose for my life."^[1]Louisiana State University named Taylor in 1972 as "Legislator of the Year".^[2]

Sidney Barthelemy, another African-American political figure in New Orleans and Morial's successor as mayor, recalled that Representative Taylor had been committed to "criminal justice reform. She worked very hard to make sure that all people were treated fairly and humanely, especially those who were imprisoned. She felt that even those incarcerated deserved to be given basic health care and some semblance of a quality of life. After all, if we treat individuals like animals while they're incarcerated, how do you expect them to act when they are released back into the community?”^[1] That same year Taylor got into an open dispute with Lieutenant General David Wade, the director of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, with authority over both state police and prisons. Wade called Taylor "a real phony" and accused her of seeking media attention by inciting trouble at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola as well as the Orleans Parish prison. He claimed that Taylor catered to a black militant group with an eye toward her own political agenda.^[3] Taylor, however, despite the criticism considered her efforts at penal reform to have been "partially successful because I have involved the courts, community organizations, the press, and hundreds of volunteers who are eager to work towards change.”^[1]

After her legislative service ended in 1980, Taylor became director of the Central City Neighborhood Health Clinic, operated by the Total Community Action Agency in New Orleans. From the Central City Clinic, other later black political leaders emerged, including State Senator Henry Braden, Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Irma Muse Dixon, and state Representative Sherman Copelin. Another later state representative, Austin Badon, was an intern in Taylor's City Hall office while he attended the University of New Orleans.^[1] In 1984, Taylor was named by third-term Governor Edwin Edwards to head the state Department of Urban and Community Affairs, the first African-American woman in a state cabinet position. In 1985, she received the "Humanitarian Award" from the Louisiana Association of Community Action Agencies. In 1986, she was elected to one of two at-large positions on the New Orleans City Council,^[2] a post which she held until she was term-limited in 1994. She became council president in 1987. Her tenure on the council coincided with that of Mayor Barthelemy.^[1]

Taylor is particularly known for her efforts while on the city council to desegregate the Mardi Gras organizations. Her proposed ordinance established jail time for officers of any club or krewe that discriminated on grounds of "race, gender, handicap or sexual orientation." A federal judge declared that Taylor's attempt to regulate membership policies of the krewes violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The final ordinance required krewe captains to sign an affidavit certifying that they are not discriminating as a condition for obtaining a parade permit. The Mistick Krewe of Comus and Momus stopped parading in New Orleans as a result of the new law but Rex, King of the Carnival, and another the krewe, Proteus, after some hesitation, fell in line with Taylor's liberal guidelines. James Gill, daily columnist of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, referred to Taylor "the firebrand of the New Orleans City Council."^[4] After Comus and Momus left New Orleans, articles were written that attacked Taylor as "The Grinch who Stole Mardi Gras." In 2006, fourteen years after the controversy began, James Gill said, "I think you cannot deny that she is remembered among white people here as the vixen who tried to destroy Mardi Gras, and who to some extent succeeded."^[1]

Taylor died in New Orleans eight days after her 72nd birthday.^[2]

References