Underwood Taylor

Back in 2021, KMUW in Wichita, Kansas posted an article on Kansas' racist past. Being nearly a year after the murder of George Floyd, the article talked about how racist Kansas was from its original settling to today and how we are trying to reconcile with that. The article mainly focused on the renaming of Noose Road in Hays to Rome Road. They also remind Kansans that while we were a Free State and founded by abolitionists, that didn't necessarily mean Kansas wanted Black people--free or enslaved--residing next to them. It's a really good article you can read here. Many of the names mentioned as being racist have been changed in the last few years.

Going over the map of racial violence, there was one that stuck out in Baldwin City. I lived in Baldwin for six years and there was never more than one Black family and maybe a couple college students that lived in the town so I wondered what this threatened lynching was all about.  In May of 1909, Underwood Taylor was a man from Missouri hired to work on the waterworks plant. He had said that he was originally from Missouri. Minnie Hackett, a five-year-old girl, was playing on the sand pile with some friends when Taylor walked by. Taylor was able to get Hackett alone. Soon, the little girl was crying and running home. Underwood Taylor was arrested and taken to Lawrence as Mr. Walter Hackett, Minnie's father, and other men in town were threatening to deal with Taylor their own way.

Taylor said that he was innocent of the charges and that he was just playing with the girl and offered to tie her shoe. Taylor was quickly convicted, given 30 days in jail, and ordered to pay a $20 fine. He then, presumably, left town.

The last mention of Underwood Taylor was in 1919 in Independence, Kansas where he was sentenced to jail for stealing seven bushels of coal from his employer and then escaping from jail.