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Mildred
D. Taylor, one of the foremost writers for young
people in the United States for three decades, will
return home to Mississippi this spring for a statewide
celebration of her work. The formal proclamation
of Mildred D. Taylor Day will take place at the Gertrude
C. Ford Center for the Performing Arts at the University
of Mississippi on April 2 at 10:30 a.m. during a
session of the 11th Oxford Conference for the Book.
Beginning with her first book, Song of the Trees,
in 1975 and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, winner
of the
1977 Newbery Medal, the most prestigious honor in children’s
literature, Taylor has written nine celebrated books
about African American life in Mississippi, where she
was born and where her father’s family had lived
since the days of slavery. All of Taylor’s books
are based on stories from her own family and are rooted
in Mississippi. Song of Trees won the first Council
on Interracial Books for Children Award and was named
a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year and a
Children’s Book Showcase book.
Taylor’s writings also have been honored with
the Coretta Scott King Author Award (Let the Circle
Be Unbroken, 1981; The Road to Friendship,
1987; The Road to Memphis,
1990; The Land, 2001), the Christopher Award (The
Gold Cadillac, 1987; The Road
to Memphis), and the American Library
Association’s
Best Book for Young Adults (Let the Circle Be Unbroken),
among others. In October 2003, she was named laureate
of the inaugural $25,000 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s
Literature, awarded by the University of Oklahoma and
its international quarterly World Literature Today.
The great-granddaughter of the son of a white plantation
owner and a slave, Taylor was born in Jackson, Mississippi,
but spent her childhood in Toledo, Ohio, returning
to the South each year with her family. She attended
Toledo’s newly integrated public schools in the
1950s and graduated from the University of Toledo in
1965, after which she joined the Peace Corps and spent
two years in Ethiopia. When she returned to the United
States, she enrolled in the University of Colorado,
where she earned a master’s degree.
In her acceptance speech as the recipient of the 1997
ALAN Award, given by the National Council for Teachers
of English to honor those who have made outstanding
contributions to the field of adolescent literature,
Taylor said that in her books, “I have attempted
to present a true picture of life in America as older
members of my family remember it, and as I remember
it in the days before the civil rights movement. In
all of the books I have recounted not only the joy
of growing up in a large and supportive family, but
my own feelings of being faced with segregation and
bigotry. . . . I have tried to present not only a history
of my family, but the effects of racism, not only to
the victims of racism but also to the racists themselves.
I have recounted events that were painful to write
and painful to read” in the “hope they brought
more understanding.”
The extent of this author’s achievements will be recognized on April 2,
2004, as an excerpt of the proclamation of her day states, “when Mildred
D. Taylor returns to the place her life and work began, to Mississippi, where
much of her family remains, to a Mississippi that no longer celebrates prejudice,
a Mississippi that embraces Mildred Taylor’s work, and honors her life and
her family and her people, and, indeed, a Mississippi that seeks to reconcile
racism and rectify ignorance by honoring all people of Mississippi.”
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