The Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity is saddened by the loss of Dr. Quintard Taylor, professor emeritus of American History at the University of Washington and inaugural Samuel E. Kelly Distinguished Faculty Lecturer, who passed away on September 21 at the age of 76.
Dr. Taylor was also well-known as the founder of BlackPast.org, a free online encyclopedia of African and African American history. BlackPast, which started in 2004, now has an archive of more than 10,000 pages and is the largest online source of Black history in the world. It is widely considered a living legacy that celebrates the many contributions of Black Americans. OMA&D and the University of Washington have long recognized Dr. Taylor as one of the foremost champions of Black history education and someone who shone a light on overlooked or forgotten Black historical figures in the United States and around the globe.
An award-winning historian, Dr. Taylor was a Fulbright Scholar and prolific editor and author of numerous books and articles. His 1998 book In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990 was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He was appointed Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History at the University of Washington in 1999. At the UW, he was a dedicated mentor to many undergraduate and doctoral students. Dr. Taylor also developed a deep connection to our office’s history and work as he co-authored our first Vice President, Dr. Samuel E. Kelly’s autobiography (Dr. Sam, Soldier, Educator, Advocate, Friend: The Autobiography of Samuel Eugene Kelly, 2010).
Our office was honored to select Dr. Taylor as the first Samuel E. Kelly Distinguished Faculty Lecturer in 2005. The annual Samuel E. Kelly Distinguished Faculty Lecture program acknowledges the work of faculty whose nationally-recognized research focuses on diversity and social justice. Entitled “From Civil Rights to Black Power in the West: The Movement in Seattle, 1960-1970,” Dr. Taylor’s lecture set the program on a course for longevity.
Dr. Taylor retired from the UW in 2018 and gave the UW’s prestigious University Faculty Lecture (“From the Pages of Blackpast: Six African American Women Who Changed the West (and the World)”) the following year. Dr. Taylor’s immense body of work and devotion to preserving Black history on BlackPast.org have had a deeply felt and ongoing impact on students, scholars, the University of Washington, and the fields of American and Black history. For more information on his storied career and legacy, please refer to BlackPast’s biography and the Seattle Times obituary.