One would think that academic scholar Quintard Taylor must have predicted the current state of America decades ago. Taylor created Blackpast.org in 2004 as an online history reference center for college students that quickly grew in popularity. Who would have thought that more than two decades later there would be a national movement to erase and even rewrite history that centers the Black experience?
Taylor, who first brought his brilliance and passion for history to Washington in 1971, died Sept. 21, in Houston. He was 76.
Born in Tennessee the son of a sharecropper, Taylor knew as a child he wanted to be a history professor, said his daughter, Washington state Rep. Jamila Taylor.
“He was the product of his time and understood the reality of segregation and how African Americans were treated in the South. He absolutely loved Black history and the pursuit of knowledge that a lot of people didn’t have access to,” she said.
Quintard Taylor graduated from Saint Augustine’s College (now university) in North Carolina, and earned master’s and doctoral degrees in history from the University of Minnesota.
He taught for two years at Washington State University, where he developed an interest in Black Americans in the West. That interest produced a book, “In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990.” In 1994, he zeroed in on Seattle with the book “The Forging of a Black Community: A History of Seattle’s Central District, 1870 through the Civil Rights Era.”
Quintard Taylor would eventually teach at the University of Oregon and California Polytechnic State University. In 1999, he became the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History at the University of Washington. He retired in 2018.
“Dr. Taylor served as a scholarly adviser during the development of ‘The Power of Place’ exhibition at NMAAHC, offering invaluable guidance marked by intellectual rigor, deep care and generosity,” said Shanita Brackett, acting director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture.
In 2007, Blackpast.org separated its online component from UW, expanded its capacity and became a nonprofit. It has since grown into a global platform that has been visited by more than 60 million people with more than 8,000 entries.
As more challenges to teaching Black history emerged recently, Quintard Taylor became more dedicated to his calling.
“He became more embedded in archiving the history and making it available for folks for free; still helping people understand the importance of Black history as part of the American fabric. Not only to talk about the struggles of Black history but the triumphs of Black history and our contributions,” his daughter said.
Quintard Taylor’s accomplishments are among those triumphs — from sharecropper’s son, to storyteller and scholar. He helped redefine understandings of the African American experience.
