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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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Activism

WOMEN IMPACTING THE CHURCH AND COMMUNITY

Published

23 hours ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Juanita Matthews

Sister Juanita Matthews

55 Years with Oakland Public School District

The Teacher, Mother, Community Outreach Champion, And Child of God

Juanita Matthews, better known as “Sister Teacher,” is a walking Bible scholar. She moved to California from the great state of Arkansas in 1971. Sister Teacher has a passion for teaching. She has been a member of Bible Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church since 1971. She followed her passion for teaching, and in 1977 became the lead teacher for Adult Class #6. Her motto still today is “Once My Student, Always My Student”.

Beyond her remarkable love for the Lord, Sister Teacher has showcased her love for teaching by working for the Oakland Unified School District for 55 years, all but four of those years spent at Emerson Elementary and Child Development School. She truly cares about her students, making sure they have the tools/supplies needed to learn either at OUSD or Bible Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church.

She’s also had a “Clothes Closet Ministry” for 51 years, making sure her students have sufficient clothing for school. The Clothes Closet Ministry extends past her students, she has been clothing the community for over 50 years as well. She loves the Lord and is a servant on a mission. She is a loving mother to two beautiful children, Sandra and Andre. This is the impact this woman of God has on her church and the community.

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Bay Area

Vivian Coit, 98

Vivian Coit, a proud Dallas, Texas native made her way to the great state of California in 1943. She was a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great grandmother.

Published

23 hours ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Vivian Coit

Celebrating A Life Well Lived

Sept. 15, 1925 ~ March 30, 2024

Vivian Coit, a proud Dallas, Texas native made her way to the great state of California in 1943. She was a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great grandmother.

In her 98 years, she had various jobs – San Francisco Naval Shipyard, elevator operator, housekeeping, a salesclerk, and supervisor for the United States Postal Service. After 27 years of service with the United States Postal Service, she retired with numerous commendations. She was a lifetime member of the National Council of Negro Women. and a devoted member of the Washington/Lincoln Alumni Association of Dallas, Texas.

On April 20 at 10:00 a.m., a life well-lived will be celebrated at Beebe Memorial Cathedral CME Church, 3900 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA under the leadership of Rev. Antoine Shyne.

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Commentary

Opinion: Surviving the Earthquake, an Eclipse and “Emil Amok.”

Last Friday, a 4.8 magnitude earthquake shook New York City, reported as the “biggest earthquake with an epicenter in the NYC area since 1884” when a 5.2 quake hit. A bit bigger. The last quake similar to Friday’s was a 4.9 in 1783.Alexander Hamilton felt it — 241 years ago. That’s why New Yorkers were freaking out on Friday. They were in the room where it happens.

Published

23 hours ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

In New York City, the eclipse was about 90 percent visible. Good enough for me. Though a full solar eclipse is a celestial rarity, blockages of any sort aren’t generally celebrated. My one-man play is about growing up with the eclipsed history of American Filipinos and how I struggle to unblock all that.

By Emil Guillermo

I’m a Northern Californian in New York City for the next few weeks, doing my one-man show, “Emil Amok, Lost NPR Host, Wiley Filipino, Vegan Transdad.”

I must like performing in the wake of Mother Nature.

Alexander Hamilton felt it — 241 years ago.

That’s why New Yorkers were freaking out on Friday. They were in the room where it happens.

And it just doesn’t happen that often.

Beyonce singing country music happens more frequently.

When I felt New York shake last week, it reminded me of a time in a San Francisco TV newsroom when editors fretted about a lack of news an hour before showtime.

Then the office carpeting moved for a good ten seconds, and the news gods gave us our lead story.

On Friday when it happened in NYC, I noticed the lines in the carpeting in my room wiggling. But I thought it was from a raucous hotel worker vacuuming nearby.

I didn’t even think earthquake. In New York?

I just went about my business as if nothing had happened. After living near fault lines all my life, I was taking things for granted.

Considering the age of structures in New York, I should have been even more concerned about falling objects inside (shelves, stuff on walls) and outside buildings (signs, scaffolding), fire hazards from possible gas leaks, and then I should have looked for others on my floor and in the hotel lobby to confirm or aid or tell stories.

Of course, as a Californian who has lived through and covered quakes in the 4 to 6 magnitude range, I tried to calm down any traumatized New Yorker I encountered by taking full responsibility for bringing in the quake from the Bay Area.

I reassured them things would be all right, and then let them know that 4.8s are nothing.

And then I invited them to my consoling post-Earthquake performance of “Emil Amok, Lost NPR Host…”

It was the night of the eclipse.

ECLIPSING THE ECLIPSE

For example, did you know the first Filipinos actually arrived to what is now California in 1587? That’s 33 years before the Pilgrims arrived in America on the other coast, but few know the Filipino history which has been totally eclipsed.

I was in Battery Park sitting on a bench and there was a sense of community as people all came to look up. A young woman sitting next to me had a filter for a cell phone camera. We began talking and she let me use it. That filter enabled me to take a picture of the main event with my iPhone.

For helping me see, I invited her and her boyfriend to come see my show.

Coincidentally, she was from Plymouth, Massachusetts, near the rock that says the year the Pilgrims landed in 1620.

In my show she learned the truth. The Pilgrims were second.

History unblocked. But it took a solar eclipse.

Next one in 2044? We have a lot more unblocking to do.

If you’re in New York come see my show, Sat. April 13th, 5:20 pm Eastern; Fri. April 19, 8:10 pm Eastern; and Sun. April 21st 5:20 pm Eastern.

You can also livestream the show. Get tickets at www.amok.com/tickets

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He does a mini-talk show on YouTube.com/@emilamok1. He wishes all his readers a Happy Easter!