As Director of the Central City Neighborhood Health Clinic from 1980, she also worked to develop African-American leaders among her staff, and mentored a number of future politicians in the state.

In 1984 she was appointed by Governor Edwin Edwards as head of the state Department of Urban and Community Affairs, becoming the first African-American woman to hold a cabinet position.

Taylor began her career in public service in the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), demanding equal supplies and funding for African American children from the Orleans Parish School Board.

[1] While working as a deputy clerk in the New Orleans Civil District Court, Taylor won a special election in 1971 to succeed Ernest Nathan Morial in the state House.

[3] Sidney Barthelemy, another African-American political figure in New Orleans and Morial's successor as mayor, recalled that Representative Taylor had been committed to: "criminal justice reform.

Embarrassed and humiliated, the krewes of Momus, Comus, and Proteus decided to follow up on their threats and issued a press release stating that they would no longer parade on the streets of New Orleans.

Soon articles were being written assailing Mrs. Taylor as a racist and berated her on posters and T-shirts as “The Grinch who Stole Mardi Gras.” Racial tensions in the city reached a fevered pitch.

Even so, some 15 years after the ordinance was unanimously passed by the City Council and nearly six years after Mrs. Taylor had passed away, certain segments of the community were still angry as evidenced in an interview given to NPR in 2006 by the city's daily newspaper columnist James Gill, “I think you cannot deny that she is remembered among white people here as the vixen who tried to destroy Mardi Gras, and who to some extent succeeded.” “I think Dorothy was just trying to protect everyone’s rights under the law,” insisted Sidney Barthelemy.

“But those rants espousing hatred and viciousness always got published and it became apparent to me who the Picayune had aligned itself with – they never had any intention of showing the real issue behind the story and it is unfortunate that to many whites, this was her lasting legacy.

She will be remembered for the light that she was in.” (Taken from article originally published in the June 13, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper) Taylor died in New Orleans in 2000, eight days after her 72nd birthday.