IUPUI is Indiana's premier urban research university. The campus enrolls more than 30,000 students in 21 schools and academic units.
Events and Programs on and around the Campus
Past Events
University College Renamed After Joseph T. Taylor
Speaker Remarks
Monroe Little
Thank you Chancellor Bantz for that introduction. I also want to thank Dean Blomquist, Dean Evenbeck and last, but not least, Dominic Dorsey for joining me on this momentous occasion.
Colleagues, students, members of the Taylor family--especially Mrs. Taylor--and assembled guests. It was once observed by none other than the man we are honoring today that oratory is "the art of making a loud noise seem like a deep thought." With that in mind, I will make every effort to not be overly loud; and I forewarn you that there is not much in the way of deep thought contained in my remarks. This day has been a long one in coming. It is the result of many years of lobbying on Dr. Taylor's behalf by friends and colleagues since his passing. Some of those individuals, such as Sam Jones and Bill Taylor, are not with us today. They, like Dr. Taylor, have achieved their much deserved eternal rest. I think that all of us who are gathered here this afternoon, however, would agree that today was well worth the wait.
Dr. Joseph Thomas Taylor, an instrumental founding father of IUPUI, was a man of deep conviction, an educator who served his colleagues, his community, his people, and his country with distinction. We are now honoring his legacy and family with deep respect. I have often told my students that there is a fate much worse than death; and that fate is being completely forgotten. By renaming University College Joseph T. Taylor Hall, the University insures that such a fate will not befall Dr. Taylor.
Colleagues and friends remember Dr. Taylor as a patient mentor, inspirational teacher, avid sportsfan, loyal friend, and a master storyteller as well as a man of wisdom, patience, vision, and leadership. As one colleague observed, "There was nobody that he did not consider part of his extended family. He set a tone of mutual respect and civility in the School of Liberal Arts-- not only by what he said and how he said it, but more importantly, by what he did." The beloved community--a phrase from the halcyon days of the civil rights era--which Dr. Taylor attempted to create here during the early days of IUPUI was absolutely critical for establishing the tone for how we treated students and faculty.
Yet above all, Dr. Taylor cared deeply about America's youth and their future as well as the Black community's empowerment and progress. In addition to his work as a professor of Sociology at Florida A & M, Albany State College and Dillard University Dr. Taylor served as an Area Director in the New Deal’s National Youth Administration. His initial reason for coming to Indianapolis in 1957 was to serve as Director of Program Development at Flanner House. Renaming this building Joseph Taylor Hall--which already serves as the gateway to entering students at IUPUI and will house the University’s new, much needed and long overdue Multi-cultural Center--is a fitting tribute to his life’s work.
Indianapolis is quite a distance from Rolling Fork, Mississippi, where Dr. Taylor was born--a distance made even longer when one arrives here by the circuitous route of East Saint Louis where he grew up; Texas, Illinois and Indiana where he attended college and graduate school; the battlefields of France, Germany and Belgium where he served with the U. S. Army's all-black 999th Field Artillery Battalion; and Florida, Georgia and Louisiana where he worked variously as a faculty member and administrator at a host of black colleges and universities. We are thankful that he eventually came to our city and made it his home.
At at a time when the bi-racial son of a black Kenyan immigrant father and a white native American mother may become president of the United States, it is easy for us to forget--even for us who were alive then--what the state of race relations was like during the early years of Dr. Taylor's academic career. Faculty of color seem so ubiquitous on U. S. college campuses today, we fail to remember that it was not until 1941--the same year Dr. Taylor was called to active duty in the military--that the first black American was appointed a regular, full-time faculty member at a predominantly white institution of higher education. Indeed, the entire United States at that time was a country awash in racial prejudice and discrimination. Elevators in southern cities, such as Birmingham, Alabama displayed signs reserving them for "Negroes and Freight" (I'm using the politically correct appellation to describe the content of this sign.), while nooses were not mere symbols of black oppression, but an all-too-real horrific enforcer of American apartheid. Legal segregation was the rule in the South, while defacto segregation was the norm in northern states such as Indiana. A 1969 Foreign Affairs article, worth reading even today, reminds us that as late as the 1940s the world was still by and large a Western white-dominated world. Long established patterns of white power and the exploitation of non-whites were still the generally accepted order of things. All the accompanying assumptions and mythologies about race and color were still mostly taken for granted. White supremacy "was a generally assumed and accepted state of affairs in the United States as well as in Europe’s empires."
Perhaps it is worth noting here that Dr. Taylor’s lengthy association with IUPUI--the primary reason we are gathered here today--was no sure thing, even in the early 1960s. Mr. Virgil Hunt, who was instrumental in bringing Dr. Taylor to IU, remembers that when he requested Dr. Taylor’s appointment as a full-time faculty member at the Indianapolis extension in 1962 Bloomington administrator’s asked him, "Do you think we’re ready for this?" The same question was asked when Dr. Taylor was recommended for appointment as IUPUI’s first Dean of Liberal Arts. In both instances Hunt replied, "Well, if you’re not ready, you’d better get ready, because we’re ready here." We’re grateful to the powers that be at IU--Bloomington that they did not bar the door of opportunity to Dr. Taylor.
Two years after Dr. Taylor received his honorable discharge from the Army, President Harry S. Truman’s Commission on Higher Education issued its multi-volume final report. This little known or referenced document established federal policy for higher education for the next two decades and beyond. Entitled, Higher Education for American Democracy, the report proposed sweeping changes in U. S. higher education. Specific recommendations included "the abandonment of European concepts of education and the development of a curriculum attuned to the needs of a democracy; the doubling of college attendance by 1960; the integration of vocational and liberal education; the extension of free public education through the first 2 years of college for all youth who can profit from such education; the elimination of racial and religious discrimination; revision of the goals of graduate and professional school education to make them effective in training well-rounded persons as well as research specialists and technicians; and the expansion of Federal support for higher education through scholarships, fellowships, and general aid."
A little over two decades after the Commission’s report IUPUI was founded--and Dr. Taylor was present at its creation. It was a daunting task, but not without its humorous moments. The Director of the downtown campus, Mr. Hunt, remembers seeking the advice of the Dean of the Medical School, John Van Nuys about where to locate the first buildings that would become known as IUPUI. Van Nuys instructed him to, "Get just as close as you can without adding to the parking problem." We'll, at least we got half of it right.
Parking was the least of Dr. Taylor's or his staff's problems in those early years. They were confronted with working out the details of the merger of the IU and Purdue extensions in Indianapolis, coordinating planning for the School of Liberal Arts's new home, addressing the concerns and objections of the neighborhood’s residents who lost their homes as a consequence of the relocation, rationalizing the organization of the undergraduate faculty by the creation of three new schools--Liberal Arts, Science and Engineering & Technology--and the melding of two university operations into an unprecedented, seemingly impossible single unit managed by one university--Indiana--but offering the programs and degrees of both. Years of hard work would fill his days and nights in meeting these challenges, as both Mrs.Taylor and Mrs. Brandenstein will testify. Dr. Taylor was a pioneer; and pioneers, by necessity, have to work harder. His untiring, ceaseless effort as well as that of his staff and colleagues succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of all involved. He also presided over impressive growth of the School of Liberal Arts despite continued neglect, lack of funding, and the frequent loss of badly needed classrooms in Cavanaugh to various central administration offices. With a vision of the future and the university’s mission, tenacity, tact, and diplomacy Dr. Taylor made the School of Liberal Arts and IUPUI what they are today. His contribution to higher education and Indiana University is one that few, if any, will ever equal.
Today's building renaming ceremony is a fitting tribute to a modest, self effacing, dedicated colleague and public servant; a man of integrity and dignity who had the vision to insure that this institution of higher education would grow and prosper. He made an enduring mark on the School of Liberal Arts, this campus, the city of Indianapolis and Indiana University. Dr. Taylor had a deep and abiding faith in the power of education to make a difference in the lives of people, achieving human equality and creating a just, multiracial society. He believed, as did the Victorian author Charlotte Bronte, that "Prejudices...are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks."
We gather today to do much more than rename a building today, however. We gather to rededicte ourselves to the unfinished work of this university. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. The Irish poet William Butler Yeats once said, "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." Like Yeats, Dr. Taylor believed that education was more than the mere memorization of rote facts, but the critical engagement with facts that is the foundation of all learning, the basis of all knowledge and the path to true wisdom.
Real dedications are found in lives lived, days devoted. With each act of service, mentoring and education, this building will be dedicated to Dr. Taylor's memory. Long after the world has forgotten or little remembers the words spoken here today this building and its new name--Taylor Hall--will inspire IUPUI staff and faculty to further the work of the man we honor today. It will be rededicated each day as its portals welcome the next generation of students; as the seeds of intellectual curiosity are planted in young minds; as lives are transformed; and future leaders of our city, state, nation, and the world are nurtured.
We therefore look to the future. Dr. Joseph Taylor's legacy challenges us profoundly to endurance and resilience to fulfill the afore-mentioned goals; and we're ready to accept the challenge. His life is a constant reminder to each and every one of us that this university will, God willing, fulfill its educational mission, its democratic promise. It is a witness to our faith that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. It is a symbol of our continuing commitment to Dr. Taylor's vision of higher education's transformative possibilities and democratic promise which only makes us stronger, ever more hopeful and resolute in our conviction that education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.
