Hobart Taylor, Jr.

Hobart T. Taylor Jr. (December 17, 1920 – April 2, 1981) was an American attorney and civil servant who was Special Legal Counsel and the Executive Vice Chairman of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities, the forerunner to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1961 to 1965. He was the first non-white person to direct the staff of a presidential commission. He is credited with coining the phrase "affirmative action". He was appointed Associate Special Counsel to the President in 1964, making him one of the highest-ranking African Americans in the US government. He left the commission and the White House staff in 1965 to become a director of the Export–Import Bank of the United States, serving until 1968.

Early life and early career Hobart Taylor Jr. was born on December 17, 1920, in Texarkana, Texas, to Hobart T. Taylor Sr. and his wife, Charlotte ( Wallace). His father, Hobart T. Taylor Sr., was a self-made millionaire who made his fortune in the insurance industry, taxicab business, and real estate. His cousin was noted lawyer, Curtis Cavielle Taylor. About 1930, the family relocated to Houston, Texas, where young Hobart graduated from Yates High School.

He was a close associate of Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democratic Party activist, and civil rights activist who financed the lawsuit in the 1935 case Grovey v. Townsend, in which all-white primaries in Texas were held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

He received his bachelor's degree in economics from Prairie View Normal and Industrial College in Prairie View, Texas in 1939. He then enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he received his master's degree in economics in 1941. He then attended the University of Michigan Law School, where he received his J.D. and LLB degrees in 1943. As of February 1961, however, Taylor was the head of the civil division of the Wayne County district attorney's office. Throughout the 1950s, he also performed legal work for several corporations in Texas.

Taylor and his father both made substantial monetary contributions to the 1954 reelection race of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, and again to Johnson's presidential campaign in 1960.Efn|The elder Taylor had first donated to Johnson in 1948. While Taylor was initially chosen to be Executive Director, conservative Texans voiced opposition to a liberal African American from Michigan leading the committee, so John G. Field took the position. Taylor was ultimately promoted to become the PCEEO's Executive Vice Chairman on September 10, 1962, as the first non-white person to lead a US presidential committee.

Senator Richard Russell Jr. had previously prohibited President Harry S. Truman from financing equal employment efforts with contingency funds, so Taylor anticipated Democratic opposition to dedicated appropriations and instead sought funding from the Department of Labor's existing budget. Taylor continued to serve as Executive Vice Chairman of PCEEO, and played an important role in helping to implement the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His nomination was approved by the United States Senate on September 2, 1965.

Retirement and death Taylor resigned his directorship at the Export-Import Bank on January 22, 1968, and returned to private practice of the law. He joined the D.C. law firm of Dawson, Riddell, Taylor, Davis and Holroyd, then left in 1980 to become counsel for Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue. He also served on the board of directors of a wide range of corporations, including Aetna Life and Casualty Company, Burroughs Corporation, Eastern Air Lines, The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, Standard Oil of Ohio, Urban National Corporation, and Westinghouse Electric Corporation. a trustee of the NAACP, and vice chairman and trustee of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts.

Taylor married Carol Angermeir in 1978. He became stepfather to her children, Edward Rader and Teresa Warner.