Supporting Progressive Solutions to Problems of
Racism and Poverty

Bill Taylor: a tribute

What a truly major civil rights force we have all lost with Bill Taylor's death. As a new Yale Law graduate in the fall of 1954, Bill began his legal career working directly with Thurgood Marshall, Robert Carter and Jack Greenberg at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund. In the days immediately following the Brown decision. Bill played an important role in many early LDF cases, especially the Little Rock litigation in 1957, where he had key drafting responsibilities in the briefs that led to the Supreme Court's decision in Cooper v. Aaron. After working with the Americans for Democratic Action and some of Joseph Rauh's efforts, Bill joined the Kennedy Administration in the early 1960s and collaborated closely with key members of the Kennedy White House staff on civil rights issues. (Read more...)

New on PRRAC's Website

A Prescription for a New Neighborhood? Housing Vouchers as a Public Health Intervention

Preserving housing mobility in the Transforming Rental Assistance bill (June 2010)

4th National Conference on Assisted Housing Mobility June 10-11, 2010

Building Sustainable, Inclusive Communities, by David Rusk (May 2010)

Fair Housing Analysis of the Public Housing Replacement Bill (May 2010)

May-June issue of Poverty & Race

"Federally Funded Charter Schools Should Foster Diversity" (a policy brief from the National Coalition on School Diversity)

"Fair Housing and the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative"

March-April issue of Poverty & Race

March 21, 2010: International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Policy Statement (March, 2010)

Updated list of State and Local laws against Source-of-Income Discrimination (June, 2010)

ARRA & the Economic Crisis: One Year Later: Has Stimulus Helped Communities in Crisis? A Special Report from the Kirwan Institute (February, 2010)

Recent Conferences

Reaffirming the Role of School Integration in K-12 Education Policy:
Howard University School of Law, Friday, November 13, 2009

Building One America: Sept. 17-18, 2009
Watch the ten-minute highlights video

PRRAC Publications & PRRAC Authors (2008-09)

New Homes, New Neighborhoods, New Schools: A Progress Report on the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program by Lora Engdahl (PRRAC and the Baltimore Regional Housing Campaign, October 2009)

Chester Hartman and Greg Squires, "Lessons from Katrina: Structural Racism As a Recipe for Disaster" in Building Healthy Communities: A Guide to Community Economic Development for Advocates, Lawyers, and Policymakers, co-edited by Roger Clay and Susan Jones. Reprinted by permission of the American Bar Association. Copyright 2009.

Connecting Families to Opportunity: a Resource Guide for Housing Choice Voucher Program Administrators (July 2009)

Mandate for Change: Policies and Leadership for 2009 and Beyond (Lexington Books, 2009), Edited by Chester Hartman

Bringing Children Together: Magnet Schools and Public Housing Redevelopment (with the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute) (January 2009)

The Future of Race Conscious Goals in National Housing Policy by Philip Tegeler, in Public Housing and the Legacy of Segregation (M. Turner et al, eds, Urban Institute Press, 2009)

Final Report and testimony to the National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (December 2008)

Building Opportunity: Civil Rights Best Practices in the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program (2008), a 50-state survey by PRRAC and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

Organizing to Address Minority Health Disparities: A Directory of State and Local Initiatives (2008 Edition)

CERD Health Report: Unequal Health Outcomes in the United States (2008)

CERD Housing Report: Residential Segregation and Housing Discrimination in the United States (2008)

Connecting Families to Opportunity: The Next Generation of Housing Mobility Policy by Philip Tegeler in All Things Being Equal:Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time (New Press, 2008)

For PRRAC publications prior to 2008, click here

(Bill Taylor, continued:)

He eventually became general counsel and staff director of the US Civil Rights Commission, and directed research that undergirded much of the Kerner Commission Report's findings on the devastating effects of racially isolated schools. Bill also litigated many key school desegregation cases, including the Wilmington, Delaware, Cincinnati, and Ft. Wayne cases, and notably, the long-running St. Louis case that sent tens of thousands of central city students into St. Louis's suburbs and white students into St. Louis schools. He was, for many decades, a key and trusted counselor to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, where he helped lead the legislative struggle to enlarge the Voting Rights Act in its 1982 reauthorization. He also helped form the Citizen's Commission on Civil Rights and became a principal influence on the Congressional shaping and reshaping of Title I and No Child Left Behind. Bill's reports and writings graced the nation's preeminent law journals but also found their way into advocacy journals, and he taught law for years at Catholic University and Georgetown University Law School. His 2004 book, The Passion of My Times, told much of his life's story with candor but essential modesty.

And of course, Bill was one of PRRAC's founding parents – a constant, faithful, fair but critical guide for all the rest of us, and a wonderful friend. Bill was a great spirit who never relinquished his quest for equal rights, present, as always, at our most recent, Spring 2010 board meeting, where he listened with interest to others' accounts of their initiatives, readily shared his own Washington insider's take on the unfolding Obama Administration, and asked for copies of new articles and reports on civil rights issues. He was a lover of jazz and tennis, and of his wife Harriett, his life's companion, who died in 1997. We will miss him greatly.

John C. Boger, PRRAC Board Chair

Philip Tegeler, Executive Director

Chester Hartman, Director of Research