George Edwin Taylor (August 4, 1857 – December 23, 1925) was an American journalist, editor, political activist, and politician.

[4] A month after the war ended in 1865, at age 8, George landed at the docks of La Crosse, Wisconsin on board the Hawkeye State, a steam side-paddle wheeler that operated between St. Paul, Minnesota and St. Louis, Missouri.

A La Crosse County court judge intervened and had him assigned to black foster parents, Nathan and Sarah Smith.

They cared for some of the county's orphaned or abandoned children, and lived near West Salem, Wisconsin, about 10.5 miles northeast of La Crosse.

During this first year, he also obtained employment as city editor of the La Crosse Democrat, owned and edited by Marcus "Brick" Pomeroy.

During the Civil War, Pomeroy was known as a Copperhead, gaining national notoriety by calling for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

[10] Taylor was politically active at the city, county, state, and national levels while living in La Crosse.

[12] Taylor's rapid rise in La Crosse's and Wisconsin's labor movement drew attention to his race at a time when the nation was reevaluating its racial attitudes.

Taylor returned their racial challenges in equal kind, and his support base within La Crosse's predominantly white community collapsed.

Buckner was a typist and essayist who edited the Negro Solicitor (1893–1898) when Taylor was most active in politics at the state and national levels.

"[16] No known copies of Taylor's Negro Solicitor survived, except for scattered articles reprinted in other newspapers or found in scrapbooks.

That committee rejected all of their recommendations, and Taylor, in response, published a scathing "National Appeal, addressed to the American Negro and the Friends of Human Liberty.

These leagues served as black-only forums for discussing problems peculiar to the race – ideally in a non-partisan and non-confrontational setting.

"Judge" Taylor made that change in 1904 when the executive committee of the newly formed National Negro Liberty Party asked him to become their candidate for the office of president of the United States.

It was one of several leagues or assemblies that had formed at the end of the century to support bills then working their way through the United States Congress to grant pensions to former slaves.

In 1900, that Assembly reorganized as the National Industrial Council and in 1903 added issues of lynching, Jim Crow laws, disfranchisement, anti-imperialism and scientific racism to its agenda, broadening its appeal to black voters in Northern and Midwestern states.

In 1904 the Council moved its headquarters to Chicago, Illinois, and reorganized as the National Negro Civil Liberty Party.

[27] The first national convention of that new party convened in St. Louis, Missouri in July 1904, with plans to field candidates in states that had sizeable black populations.

Its platform included planks that dealt with disfranchisement, insufficient career opportunities for blacks in the United States military, imperialism, public ownership of railroads, "self-government" for the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.), lynching, and pensions for ex-slaves.

The convention also selected "Col." William Thomas Scott of East St. Louis, Illinois as its candidate for the office of president of the United States for the 1904 election.

[28] When convention delegates had left St. Louis and when Scott was arrested and jailed for having failed to pay a fine imposed in 1901, the party's executive committee turned to Taylor who had just stepped down as president of the National Negro Democratic League to lead the party's ticket.

The party's promise to put 300 speakers on the stump to support his candidacy and its plan to field 6,000 candidates for local offices failed to materialize.

"[31] In 1908, he gave a keynote address to a "Union Convention" of black political leagues that was held in Denver, Colorado at the same time that the National Democratic Party was meeting in that city.

That "Union Convention" organized a National Negro Anti-Taft League that supported the candidacy of William Jennings Bryan, Democrat from Nebraska, for the office of president of the United States.

Jacksonville's black population was large, employment opportunities were much better than in Ottumwa, and hot springs on Florida's eastern coast were believed to be particularly helpful for persons with pulmonary problems.

While in St. Augustine, he wrote two political tracts, "Removing the Mask" and "Backward Steps" which were popular themes from his earlier writing when he was claiming that the Republican Party was hypocritical and was retreating from its promises.

In May 1912 he attended a state convention of progressive Republicans in Jacksonville that championed the candidacy of Theodore Roosevelt against a second term bid by William Howard Taft of Ohio.

[39] During the war years when Jacksonville became the center of repeated outbreaks of Spanish Influenza, Taylor retreated to a farm where he raised "poultry."

When the war ended, Taylor returned to Jacksonville and became the organizer/director of an exclusive "Progressive Order of Men and Women" that was essentially an investment club and mutual insurance company.