Susan L. Taylor | |
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 Taylor in 1998 | |
| Born | January 23, 1946 Harlem, New York City, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Fordham University |
| Occupations |
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Susan L. Taylor (born January 23, 1946) is an American editor, writer, and journalist. She served as editor-in-chief of Essence from 1981 through 2000. [1] In 1994, American Libraries referred to Taylor as "the most influential black woman in journalism today".
Taylor was born in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City to a Trinidadian mother and a father from St. Kitts. [2] She grew up in East Harlem, where her father owned a clothing store. She was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic school. [3] As a teenager, she moved with her family to the New York borough of Queens. [4]
Taylor started her career at Essence, a magazine for African-American women, in 1970, the year the magazine was founded. Her first position at the magazine was freelance fashion and beauty editor. [1] At the time, she was a divorced single mother without a college degree. [5]
By 1981, Taylor had risen to become editor-in-chief, a position she held until 2000. [1] During the 1980s, she attended night school and earned a B.A. from Fordham University. [5]
In addition to her editing responsibilities, Taylor had success building the Essence brand. She was executive producer and host of Essence, the Television Program, a syndicated interview program broadcast on more than 50 stations for four years during the 1980s. In the 1990s, she began Essence Books. [5]
Taylor's monthly inspirational column, "In the Spirit", became a popular feature of the magazine. She published three volumes of selected columns.
In 2000, Taylor was promoted to publications director. She left the magazine in 2008. [1]
Several news outlets have published stories regarding trans model Tracey Norman, in which it is said that Taylor played a direct role in her exile from the industry after her transness was discovered. [6] [7] [8] Taylor has vociferously denied these accusations, and has said that she had always suspected Norman was trans. [9]
In 1986, Taylor received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. [10] In 1987, she received the Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications. [11] [12]
The Magazine Publishers of America gave Taylor its Henry Johnson Fisher Award, considered one of the industry's highest honors, in 1998. She was the first African-American woman to receive the award. [1] [13]
In 2002, Taylor was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame for her work at Essence. [14] [15]
Exceptional Women in Publishing presented Taylor its fifth annual Exceptional Woman in Publishing award in 2003. [16]
In 2006, the NAACP gave Taylor its President's Award. [17]
Taylor is an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority; she was inducted on July 13, 2013. [18]
In 1989, Taylor married writer Khephra Burns at their home in upstate New York. [19] Taylor's daughter, Shana, owns a beauty supply business and is married to NBA Hall of Fame inductee Bernard King. [5]
Nia Talita Long is an American actress. Best known for her work in Black cinema, Long rose to prominence after starring in the film Boyz n the Hood (1991), and for her portrayal of Beullah "Lisa" Wilkes on the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1991–1995). She then appeared in Friday (1995), as well as the 1997 films Love Jones and Soul Food.
Tracee Joy Silberstein, known professionally as Tracee Ellis Ross, is an American actress. She is known for her lead roles in the television series Girlfriends (2000–2008) and Black-ish (2014–2022) receiving nominations for five Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the latter.
Pamela Suzette Grier is an American actress and singer. Described by many as cinema's first female action star, she achieved fame for her starring roles in a string of 1970s action, blaxploitation and women in prison films for American International Pictures and New World Pictures. Her accolades include nominations for an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Satellite Award and a Saturn Award.
Essence is an American monthly lifestyle magazine covering fashion, beauty, entertainment, and culture. First published in 1970, the magazine is written for African-American women.
Xernona Clayton Brady is an American civil rights leader and broadcasting executive. During the Civil Rights Movement, she worked for the National Urban League and Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where she became involved in the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Later, Clayton went into television, where she became the first African American from the southern United States to host a daily prime time talk show. She became corporate vice president for Turner Broadcasting.
Sharon Emily Epperson is a senior personal finance correspondent for CNBC. She also appears on NBC News shows, Today and NBC Nightly News.
Clara Shepard Luper was a civic leader, schoolteacher, and pioneering leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. She is best known for her leadership role in the 1958 Oklahoma City sit-in movement, as she, her young son and daughter, and numerous young members of the NAACP Youth Council successfully conducted carefully planned nonviolent sit-in protests of downtown drugstore lunch-counters, which overturned their policies of segregation. The success of this sit-in would result in Luper becoming a leader of various sit-ins throughout Oklahoma City between 1958 and 1964. The Clara Luper Corridor is a streetscape and civic beautification project from the Oklahoma Capitol area east to northeast Oklahoma City. In 1972, Clara Luper was an Oklahoma candidate for election to the United States Senate. When asked by the press if she, a black woman, could represent white people, she responded: “Of course, I can represent white people, black people, red people, yellow people, brown people, and polka dot people. You see, I have lived long enough to know that people are people.”
Vanessa Lynn Williams is an American singer, actress, model, producer, and dancer. She gained recognition as the first Black woman to win the Miss America title when she was crowned Miss America 1984. She would later resign her title amid a media controversy surrounding nude photographs published in Penthouse magazine. Thirty-two years later, Williams was offered a public apology during the Miss America 2016 pageant for the events.
Virginia DeBerryand Donna Grant are American authors who co-wrote several literary works between 1990 and 2010.
Exceptional Women in Publishing (EWIP) is a non-profit organization formerly known as Women in Periodical Publishing (WIPP). EWIP's goal is to help women in publishing support each other, develop leadership skills, and balance professional and personal interests. EWIP's programs are meant to foster growth for smaller, independent publications by and for women and to offer a range of community building and professional development programs through its gatherings, online communications, advocacy, mentoring and research.
Laverne Cox is an American actress and LGBT advocate. She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990. In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as executive producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, making her the first trans woman to win the award. In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on U.S. broadcast TV as Cameron Wirth on CBS's Doubt.
Herb Boyd is an American journalist, teacher, author, and activist. His articles appear regularly in the New York Amsterdam News. He teaches black studies at the City College of New York and the College of New Rochelle.
Louise Meriwether was an American novelist, essayist, journalist and activist, as well as a writer of biographies of historically important African Americans for children. She is best known for her first novel, Daddy Was a Number Runner (1970), which draws on autobiographical elements about growing up in Harlem, New York City, during the Depression and in the era after the Harlem Renaissance.
Danyel SmithWilson is an American magazine editor, journalist, and novelist. Smith is the former and first African-American editor of Billboard and Vibe magazine, respectively. She is author of two novels and a history of African-American women in pop music.
Tracey "Africa" Norman, aka Tracey Africa, is an American fashion model, and the first African-American trans woman model to achieve prominence in the fashion industry. Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Norman has modeled and been photographed for such publications as Essence, Vogue Italia and Harper's Bazaar India. Norman also had a magazine cover and life story spread in New York Magazine.
Amy DuBois Barnett is an American magazine editor. She was formerly editor-in-chief of Ebony magazine. Barnett was also the editor-in-chief of Honey and Teen People magazines, and the deputy editor of Harper's Bazaar. She was the first African-American woman to run a major mainstream magazine in the United States. Barnett is also an award-winning fiction writer with several published short stories. In 2008, she published an NAACP Image Award-nominated advice book for women: Get Yours! How to Have Everything You Ever Dreamed of and More.
Girls Trip is a 2017 American comedy film starring Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen Latifah. The film is directed by Malcolm D. Lee and written by Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver, from a story by the pair and Erica Rivinoja, who based the script off their own experiences with their female friends. The film follows a group of four friends who go to New Orleans to attend the Essence Music Festival in order to reconnect after a long time.
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Marcia Ann Gillespie is an African-American magazine editor, writer, professor, media and management consultant, and racial and gender justice activist. She previously served as editor-in-chief of Essence magazine and Ms. magazine. She co-authored the authorized biography Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration, and is currently working on her own memoir titled When Blacks Became Americans. She teaches media and communications at SUNY Old Westbury College as a visiting professor.
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