Community

Carol Taylor’s 1st Flight Made History for African Americans

Published

9 years ago

February 23, 2015

By Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Julie Wolf, The Root

Who was the first African-American flight attendant for a U.S. airline?

The skies weren’t always so friendly to Black people. In the mid-1950s, the handful of Black employees working for the major U.S. carriers were in service positions, and all the pilots (male only) and flight attendants (female only) were white, until Feb. 11, 1958, when Carol Taylor, born in 1931, made her inaugural flight for Mohawk Airlines as its “first Negro airline hostess.”

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The airline industry had been under increasing pressure by civil rights groups to hire African Americans. Taylor and another African-American woman, Dorothy Franklin, backed by New York’s State Commission Against Discrimination, had applied to TWA for a stewardess position; both were rejected.

At the same time, likely motivated more by a desire for publicity than to integrate, the Ithaca, N.Y.-based Mohawk Airlines was seeking to hire a Black stewardess.

Taylor suspected that the fact that she was “near-white enough with aquiline features, so called” and had “answered the questions about race in the way I knew they wanted them answered” moved hers to the top of the pile of 800 applications. For six months Taylor worked at what she later called “an upstairs-maid job” and was never once asked to join the rest of the crew for meals.

After Mohawk, Taylor threw herself into grassroots and civil rights activism. She founded the group Negro Women on the March and participated in the March on Washington. At the end of 1963 she moved to Barbados, where she founded the island’s first professional nursing school and fought for consumer rights and women’s rights.

In 1982, collaborating with the psychologist Mari P. Saunders, Taylor invented the Racism/Colorism Quotient, or R/CQ, Test, akin to the IQ test but measuring racial bias in commercial, educational and social settings.

Together they founded the Institute for Interracial Harmony, with the hefty goal of administering the test to all professionals who might be tasked as decision-makers for Black people and facilitating diversity-training seminars.

In her work and life she created a new vocabulary, calling herself a “blacktivist” and rejecting the notion of there being multiple races, substituting “colorism” for “racism” and embracing the “hueman race”: “many colors, one race.”

In 1985, Taylor self-published “The Little Black Book: Black Male Survival in America, or Staying Alive and Well in an Institutionally Racist Society,” a rule book inspired by her son’s criminal treatment by police when he sought their help after a mugging in which he was the victim.

This son, Laurence Legall Taylor, has picked up the mantle from his mother, advocating on the institute’s website for the administration of the R/CQ Test in an article addressing the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Mo.

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Oakland Post: Week of April 24 – 30, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 24 – 30, 2024

Published

5 days ago

April 26, 2024

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

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Alameda County

DA Pamela Price Stands by Mom Who Lost Son to Gun Violence in Oakland

Last week, The Post published a photo showing Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price with Carol Jones, whose son, Patrick DeMarco Scott, was gunned down by an unknown assailant in 2018.

Published

1 week ago

April 22, 2024

Oakland Post

District Attorney Pamela Price with Carol Jones

Publisher’s note: Last week, The Post published a photo showing Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price with Carol Jones, whose son, Patrick DeMarco Scott, was gunned down by an unknown assailant in 2018. The photo was too small for readers to see where the women were and what they were doing. Here we show Price and Jones as they complete a walk in memory of Scott. For more information and to contribute, please contact Carol Jones at 510-978-5517 at morefoundation.help@gmail.com. Courtesy photo.

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City Government

Vallejo Welcomes Interim City Manager Beverli Marshall

At Tuesday night’s Council meeting, the Vallejo City Council appointed Beverli Marshall as the interim city manager. Her tenure in the City Manager’s Office began today, Wednesday, April 10. Mayor Robert McConnell praised Marshall’s extensive background, noting her “wide breadth of experience in many areas that will assist the City and its citizens in understanding the complexity of the many issues that must be solved” in Vallejo.

Published

1 week ago

April 22, 2024

Oakland Post

Beverli Marshall began her first day with the City on April 10. ICMA image.

Special to The Post

At Tuesday night’s Council meeting, the Vallejo City Council appointed Beverli Marshall as the interim city manager. Her tenure in the City Manager’s Office began today, Wednesday, April 10.

Mayor Robert McConnell praised Marshall’s extensive background, noting her “wide breadth of experience in many areas that will assist the City and its citizens in understanding the complexity of the many issues that must be solved” in Vallejo.

Current City Manager Michael Malone, whose official departure is slated for April 18, expressed his well wishes. “I wish the City of Vallejo and Interim City Manager Marshall all the best in moving forward on the progress we’ve made to improve service to residents.” Malone expressed his hope that the staff and Council will work closely with ICM Marshall to “ensure success and prosperity for the City.”

According to the Vallejo Sun, Malone stepped into the role of interim city manager in 2021 and became permanent in 2022. Previously, Malone served as the city’s water director and decided to retire from city service e at the end of his contract which is April 18.

“I hope the excellent work of City staff will continue for years to come in Vallejo,” he said. “However, recent developments have led me to this decision to announce my retirement.”

When Malone was appointed, Vallejo was awash in scandals involving the housing division and the police department. A third of the city’s jobs went unfilled during most of his tenure, making for a rocky road for getting things done, the Vallejo Sun reported.

At last night’s council meeting, McConnell explained the selection process, highlighting the council’s confidence in achieving positive outcomes through a collaborative effort, and said this afternoon, “The Council is confident that by working closely together, positive results will be obtained.”

While the search for a permanent city manager is ongoing, an announcement is expected in the coming months.

On behalf of the City Council, Mayor McConnell extended gratitude to the staff, citizen groups, and recruitment firm.

“The Council wishes to thank the staff, the citizens’ group, and the recruitment firm for their diligent work and careful consideration for the selection of what is possibly the most important decision a Council can make on behalf of the betterment of our City,” McConnell said.

The Vallejo Sun contributed to this report.