Thelma Chiles Taylor
American editor
Thelma Ida May Mercer Chiles Taylor Lee (December 7, 1900 – May 30, 1984) was an American newspaper editor, journalist, poet, librarian, and educator. She was editor and owner of the Topeka Plaindealer, a weekly newspaper serving Black communities in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Missouri, from 1930 to 1932.
Early life and education
Chiles was born in Topeka, Kansas, the daughter of Nick Chiles and Minnie Elizabeth Morris Chiles. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1923. She was a member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
Career
Taylor taught school in Gary, Indiana, and Chicago after college, and was a librarian at Virginia State College. She took over as editor and owner of the weekly Topeka Plaindealer in 1930, after her father died. She wrote an editorial supporting senator Henry J. Allen, a fellow newspaper owner.
In 1932 Taylor was appointed librarian of the Kansas Vocational School, and she wrote "State Capitol News", a column for The Kansas City American newspaper, on events on Topeka, including an appearance by Langston Hughes. She was vice-president of the Kansas Jeffersonian League in 1933.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thelma Chiles Taylor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.