Margaret Taylor Burroughs
Margaret Taylor Burroughs was an American visual artist, writer, poet, educator, and arts organizer. She was a prolific writer, with her efforts directed toward the exploration of the Black experience and toward children, especially to their appreciation of their cultural identity and to their introduction and growing awareness of art.
She was born Victoria Margaret Taylor in St. Rose, Louisiana, where her father worked as a farmer and laborer at a railroad warehouse. The family moved to Chicago in 1920 when she was five years old. There she attended Englewood High School along with Gwendolyn Brooks,( a famous poet who became a US Poet Laureate). As classmates, the two joined the NAACP Youth Council. Burroughs earned her teacher's certificates from Chicago Teachers College in 1937. An active member of the African-American community, she helped found the South Side Community Arts Center in 1939 to serve as a social center, gallery, and studio for showcasing African American artists. In 1946, Taylor-Burroughs earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in art education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she also earned her Master of Arts degree in art education in 1948. A long-time educator, she spent much of her teaching career at DuSable High School on Chicago's south side from 1946 to 1969. As an artist, she produced paintings, ink drawings and linocuts.
In 1949, she married the poet Charles Gordon Burroughs. They co-founded what is now the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago in 1961. The institution was originally known as the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art and made its debut in the living room of their house at 3806 S. Michigan Avenue in the Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago's south side. Burroughs served as its first Executive Director. She was proud of the institution's grass-roots beginnings: "We're the only one that grew out of the indigenous Black community. We weren't started by anybody downtown; we were started by ordinary folks." The museum moved to its current location at 740 E. 56th Place in Washington Park in 1973, and today is the oldest museum of Black culture in the United States. Burroughs served as executive director until she retired in 1985 and was then named director emeritus, remaining active in the museum's operations and fundraising efforts.
She died in Chicago on November 21, 2010.
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