Iowa Almanac
Iowa Almanac -- Friday, November 08, 2024
It wouldn't be Christmas without Camp Courageous Fruitcakes, and they're now available in stores across Iowa and at Camp Courageous.org/Fruitcakes. Camp Courageous Fruitcakes are generously filled with cherries, nuts, pineapple, coconut, and just the right amount of cake batter to hold it all together. Most of all, proceeds go to support Camp Courageous near Monticello, Iowa. For a list of stores or to order online, go to Camp Courageous.org/Fruitcakes. By the time of the Iowa caucuses early in a presidential election year, we Iowans have already seen candidates for close to two years. Elections didn't used to last this long, and in the early 1900s it wasn't surprising to see new political parties pop up. After all, the Republicans themselves had only been around for fifty years. George Edwin Taylor was an African American who was born in 1857 in Arkansas. His father was a slave, and he and his mother, who was a free black, fled the state to Illinois when George was only two years of age. He made his way to Wisconsin where he became a journalist and labor activist. By 1891, George Taylor was in Oskaloosa, Iowa, where he published a weekly newspaper called The Negro Solicitor, and served as a local justice of the peace. At first he was a Republican, but then became a Democrat. In fact, he was president of what was called the Negro Bureau within the National Democratic Party. But he became disenchanted with both major parties in that post-Civil War era, and in 1904, George Taylor joined the National Negro Liberty Party, and became its candidate for president. It was not a very successful run. Jim Crow laws kept blacks from voting across the country, much less being on the ballot. It's believed that Taylor received 65,000 votes nationwide, but records are sketchy. After the election he returned to Iowa, but moved to Florida for health reasons by 1910. He also returned to the Democratic Party, calling himself an independent first, Democrat second, and always black. George Taylor knew he would lose that presidential election, but called it a duty to his race regardless of the outcome. The election was held while he was living in Oskaloosa, as George Taylor became the first African-American to run for the presidency, when citizens voted on this date in 1904. And that's Iowa Almanac for November 8th. There's more online at IowaAlmanac.com. Until Monday, I'm Jeff Stein.