Taylor Branch
Encyclopedia
Taylor Branch is an American author and historian
best known for his award-winning trilogy of books chronicling the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.
and some of the history of the American civil rights movement
. The third and final volume of the 2,912-page trilogy — collectively called America in the King Years — was released in January 2006. Branch lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife, Christina Macy, and their two children, Macy (born 1980) and Franklin (b. 1983).
in Atlanta in 1964. From there, he went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
on a Morehead Scholarship. He graduated in 1968 and went on to earn an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
at Princeton University
in 1970.
He was a lecturer
in politics
and history
at Goucher College
from 1998 to 2000.
from 1970 to 1973; he was Washington editor of Harper's from 1973 to 1976;
and he was Washington columnist for Esquire Magazine from 1976 to 1977. He also has written for a wide variety of other publications, including The New York Times Magazine
; Sport; The New Republic
; and Texas Monthly
.
In 1972, Branch worked for the Texas
campaign of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern
. Some of Branch's coworkers in the effort were Bill Clinton
, at the time his roommate and later to be president of the United States, Hillary Rodham, Bill's then-girlfriend and Yale Law School classmate and later his wife, first lady of the United States and U.S. Secretary of State, and Houston lawyer Julius Glickman.
In October 1976, Simon & Schuster
published Blind Ambition, which purports to be, mainly, a Watergate-related memoir by John Dean
, the former White House Counsel to President Richard Nixon
. On several occasions, Taylor Branch has publicly stated that he was the ghostwriter
for this book. John Dean has denied this, though in 1995 gave sworn-deposition testimony that Taylor Branch actually wrote large sections of the book without his (Mr. Dean's) participation, knowledge, or approval. John Dean claimed furthermore that these sections written by Taylor Branch were partially fictional. Taylor Branch has, in turn, denied John Dean's claims, and continues to assert, including on his website (cited below under "External links"), that he was, in fact, the ghostwriter for "Blind Ambition," and that all of the book's content originated with Dean.
Branch's book on former president Bill Clinton
, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With The President, was written from many tape-recorded interviews and conversations between the two, most of which occurred in the White House during Clinton's two terms in office and which were not disclosed publicly until 2009 at the time of the book's publication.
Taylor Branch received a five-year MacArthur Foundation
Fellowship (also known as a "genius grant") in 1991 and the National Humanities Medal
in 1999.
In 2008, Taylor Branch received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
's Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to him by special guest Edwin C. Moses.
were denied citizenship under the Israeli law of return because of alleged anti-Black sentiment among Israeli Jews. Branch was criticized by Seth Forman, who said the claims seem baseless, particularly in light of Israel's airlift of thousands of black Ethiopian Jews in the early 1990s. A group of American civil rights activist led by Bayard Rustin
investigated and concluded that racism was not the cause of Black Hebrews' situation.
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
best known for his award-winning trilogy of books chronicling the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
and some of the history of the American civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
. The third and final volume of the 2,912-page trilogy — collectively called America in the King Years — was released in January 2006. Branch lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife, Christina Macy, and their two children, Macy (born 1980) and Franklin (b. 1983).
Early life and education
Branch graduated from The Westminster SchoolsThe Westminster Schools
The Westminster Schools is a private school in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Founded in 1951 and tracing its origins to 1878, Westminster has the largest endowment of any non-boarding school in the United States...
in Atlanta in 1964. From there, he went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
on a Morehead Scholarship. He graduated in 1968 and went on to earn an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school has granted undergraduate A.B. degrees since 1930 and graduate degrees since 1948...
at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1970.
He was a lecturer
Lecturer
Lecturer is an academic rank. In the United Kingdom, lecturer is a position at a university or similar institution, often held by academics in their early career stages, who lead research groups and supervise research students, as well as teach...
in politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
at Goucher College
Goucher College
Goucher College is a private, co-educational, liberal arts college located in the northern Baltimore suburb of Towson in unincorporated Baltimore County, Maryland, on a 287 acre campus. The school has approximately 1,475 undergraduate students studying in 31 majors and six interdisciplinary...
from 1998 to 2000.
Career
Branch served as an assistant editor at The Washington MonthlyThe Washington Monthly
The Washington Monthly is a bimonthly nonprofit magazine of United States politics and government that is based in Washington, D.C.The magazine's founder is Charles Peters, who started the magazine in 1969 and continues to write the "Tilting at Windmills" column in each issue. Paul Glastris, former...
from 1970 to 1973; he was Washington editor of Harper's from 1973 to 1976;
and he was Washington columnist for Esquire Magazine from 1976 to 1977. He also has written for a wide variety of other publications, including The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
; Sport; The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
; and Texas Monthly
Texas Monthly
Texas Monthly is a monthly American magazine headquartered in Austin, Texas. Texas Monthly is published by Emmis Publishing, L.P. and was founded in 1973 by Michael R. Levy, Texas Monthly chronicles life in contemporary Texas, writing on politics, the environment, industry, and education...
.
In 1972, Branch worked for the Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
campaign of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....
. Some of Branch's coworkers in the effort were Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
, at the time his roommate and later to be president of the United States, Hillary Rodham, Bill's then-girlfriend and Yale Law School classmate and later his wife, first lady of the United States and U.S. Secretary of State, and Houston lawyer Julius Glickman.
In October 1976, Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
published Blind Ambition, which purports to be, mainly, a Watergate-related memoir by John Dean
John Dean
John Wesley Dean III is an American lawyer who served as White House Counsel to United States President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. In this position, he became deeply involved in events leading up to the Watergate burglaries and the subsequent Watergate scandal cover-up...
, the former White House Counsel to President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
. On several occasions, Taylor Branch has publicly stated that he was the ghostwriter
Ghostwriter
A ghostwriter is a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person. Celebrities, executives, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, magazine articles, or other written...
for this book. John Dean has denied this, though in 1995 gave sworn-deposition testimony that Taylor Branch actually wrote large sections of the book without his (Mr. Dean's) participation, knowledge, or approval. John Dean claimed furthermore that these sections written by Taylor Branch were partially fictional. Taylor Branch has, in turn, denied John Dean's claims, and continues to assert, including on his website (cited below under "External links"), that he was, in fact, the ghostwriter for "Blind Ambition," and that all of the book's content originated with Dean.
Branch's book on former president Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With The President, was written from many tape-recorded interviews and conversations between the two, most of which occurred in the White House during Clinton's two terms in office and which were not disclosed publicly until 2009 at the time of the book's publication.
Taylor Branch received a five-year MacArthur Foundation
MacArthur Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is one of the largest private foundations in the United States. Based in Chicago but supporting non-profit organizations that work in 60 countries, MacArthur has awarded more than US$4 billion since its inception in 1978...
Fellowship (also known as a "genius grant") in 1991 and the National Humanities Medal
National Humanities Medal
The National Humanities Medal honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities, broadened citizens’ engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to important resources in the humanities.The award, given by the...
in 1999.
In 2008, Taylor Branch received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
Dayton Literary Peace Prize
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which was first awarded in 2006, "is the only annual U.S. literary award recognizing the power of the written word to promote peace." Awards are given for adult fiction and non-fiction books published at some point within the immediate past year that have led...
's Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to him by special guest Edwin C. Moses.
Controversial Statements
In his 1992 essay "Blacks and Jews: The Uncivil War", Branch said that the Jews have been "perpetrators of racial hate", citing an example where he claims that Black Hebrew IsraelitesBlack Hebrew Israelites
Black Hebrew Israelites are groups of people mostly of Black African ancestry situated mainly in the United States who believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites. Black Hebrews adhere in varying degrees to the religious beliefs and practices of mainstream Judaism...
were denied citizenship under the Israeli law of return because of alleged anti-Black sentiment among Israeli Jews. Branch was criticized by Seth Forman, who said the claims seem baseless, particularly in light of Israel's airlift of thousands of black Ethiopian Jews in the early 1990s. A group of American civil rights activist led by Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non-violence, and gay rights.In the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation , Rustin practiced nonviolence...
investigated and concluded that racism was not the cause of Black Hebrews' situation.
Books
- Blowing the Whistle: Dissent in the Public Interest (with Charles PetersCharles PetersCharles Peters is an American journalist, editor, and author.Founder and former editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly magazine, he is currently the president of Understanding Government. Peters was born in Charleston, West Virginia in 1926. He attended local public schools, graduating from...
) (Praeger: 1972) - Second Wind (with Bill Russell) (Random HouseRandom HouseRandom House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
: 1979) - The Empire Blues (fictionFictionFiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
) (Simon & SchusterSimon & SchusterSimon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
: 1981) - Labyrinth (with Eugene M. Propper): (VikingViking PressViking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
: 1982) - Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (Simon & Schuster: 1988)
- Pulitzer Prize for HistoryPulitzer Prize for HistoryThe Pulitzer Prize for History has been awarded since 1917 for a distinguished book upon the history of the United States. Many history books have also been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography...
, 1989 - National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction, 1988
- English-Speaking Union Book Award, 1989: National Book AwardNational Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
, Non-FictionNon-fictionNon-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
, 1989- Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 (Simon & Schuster: 1998)
- American Bar AssociationAmerican Bar AssociationThe American Bar Association , founded August 21, 1878, is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. The ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation...
, Silver Gavel Award, 1999 - Imus Book Award, 1999
- Sidney Hillman Book Award, 1999
- At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 (Simon & Schuster: 2006)
- : Wrestling History with the President (Simon & Schuster: 2009)
- The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA (Byliner, 2011)
External links
- http://www.taylorbranch.com/
- Inventory of the Taylor Branch Papers, 1865-2005, at the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillThe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
.