Reporter Volume 25, No.15 February 3, 1994

By MARK WALLACE
Reporter Staff

His family and his community taught Henry Louis Taylor to believe in
himself and his possibilities, and taught him, as well, the importance
of working to improve society at large.
	Taylor had already experienced many career changes, and
numerous intellectual challenges, when he came to UB in 1987 as a
professor in the American Studies Department and the director of the
Center for Applied Public Affairs Studies. But to understand the
things that have motivated him, it is necessary to go back to his
upbringing in Nashville, Tennessee.
	"Nashville is a very different sort of southern town," Taylor
says. "It's often referred to as the 'Athens of the South' because of
its large number of academic institutions. It's long been known as a
center for black education, with institutions like Fisk University and
the Meharry Medical College and Hospital.
	"There was a thriving black middle class and business class,
so I grew up in an environment where I was used to black people
running things. Certainly, Nashville was segregated. But Nashville had
black lawyers, doctors, scientists, policemen, engineers, and there
were many wealthy blacks in the city.
	"People of different classes, rich and poor, lived in the same
neighborhood, and mixed together. I didn't grow up feeling inferior to
others, or better than them. I believed that I could do anything I
wanted because I saw the evidence all around me. And I had great
teachers, too, who were on a mission to instill in their students a
sense of purpose and pride, struggling with them to help them become
the best they could be.
	"My father was my hero and role model. He had a Ph.D. from
Cornell, and was chair of Agricultural Economics at Tennessee
Agricultural and Industrial State University. He taught me that a
person should be ashamed until they had won a victory for humankind,
and that greater talent leads to greater responsibility. So I grew up
asking myself the question of how I was going to serve humanity and
make the world around me better."
	Taylor started his career as a clinical audiologist, working
with people who had hearing difficulties. Although he found the work
rewarding, he eventually came to feel that the field did not allow him
to make as much of a contribution to his society as he felt was
necessary.
	"I'll never forget a five-year-old patient I had who was
functionally deaf," Taylor says. "She was bright, but her mother was
on welfare, and it was very expensive for a child who was hard of
hearing to get an education. I tried to find dollars or resources for
her education, but couldn't. Looking at her, I thought that I could
sit down and write the story of her whole life, because she would
never have the resources to realize her potential. There were so many
thousands of others like her that I felt I had to move from the health
sciences to public policy issues in which I could better help such
people."
	In the 1970s, while working on his Ph.D. in history at UB,
Taylor became involved with politics, and spent time as a political
organizer for the Black Workers Congress, which eventually sent him to
Cincinnati. When the BWC disbanded, Taylor became an administrator for
the University of Cincinnati Medical School.
	"While I was there, I really came to understand the art and
science of administration," Taylor says. "I learned how big
organizations functioned, and my skills crystallized and matured. I
came to feel, as well, that many African American movements had failed
because they had no institutional knowledge base available to them.
There was no sophisticated, systematic effort to produce knowledge
that could shape policies to help people who lived in underdeveloped
areas of cities."
	The desire to create an organization to do just that led
Taylor to develop the Center for Applied Public Affairs Studies at UB
in 1987, after seven years as a professor at Ohio State University.
"The Center, which is part of the Office of Public Service and Urban
Affairs, was made possible by the efforts of Robert Palmer, vice
president for student affairs, who truly saw the connection between my
vision and Buffalo's needs," Taylor says. "And President Greiner, who
was then provost, was a great help as well.
	"The Center studies the history of underdeveloped
neighborhoods and communities in order to define modern problems,"
Taylor says. "Since our goal is to change the world, not just to study
it, we take our ideas and make them projects to change urban reality.
	"Our projects involve large research teams, since the
development of society is too complex for the purview of any one
scholar. We have developed interdisciplinary teams within the context
of carefully crafted conceptual frameworks. One of the things I'm most
proud of is that we've proven that an academic group can break down
disciplinary walls and develop partnerships and projects with other
academic areas."
	Two of Taylor's projects at the Center have resulted in the
books, Race and the City, a study of black urban life in Cincinnati
from 1820 to 1970, and African Americans and the Rise of Buffalo's
Post-Industrial City, which he describes as "an action-oriented
research project that sought to identify the problems and difficulties
faced by African Americans since 1940 in Buffalo, and to develop a
strategy agenda for attacking those problems." That book has taken on
a "life of its own," Taylor says, and has had a significant influence
on policies affecting African Americans in Buffalo.
	"Rather than seeing the black experience as shaped by whites,
we see it as rooted in the very building of American citiesQthe
choices, decisions, and definitions of problems that urban leaders
have made," Taylor says.
	Through the Office of Urban Initiatives, a non-profit planning
and economic development group with a neighborhood focus, the Center
has also been "incubating" a major economic development project to
encourage business development in African American and other
underdeveloped urban communities, Taylor says. The Center is currently
involved in a project in the Town Gardens area of the Ellicott section
of Buffalo designed to achieve social, economic and commercial
revitalization through business and residential development, he says.
	"We view such inner-city neighborhoods as underdeveloped and
as places for opportunities, and not merely as problems," Taylor says.
"We look for strengths in those communities, so we can see the
foundation on which to build. Although the main problems in such
communities are with economics, most organizations focus on social
problems, which are symptoms but not the cause.
	"At the Center, our research creates insight, and insight
creates policy which reflects back on research and knowledge. Our
studies show that communities make the most progress when there is
broad-based development that cuts across race, class, and gender. We
try to build partnerships, to structure shared projects in the real
world.
	"In the final analysis, the Center for Applied Public Affairs
Studies is a reflection of the wisdom of President Greiner, who
understood what was required to keep UB moving forward. Greiner, Vice
President Palmer, and Muriel Moore, vice president for public service
and urban affairs, have all been very supportive of the Center, and
because of them we have received a major commitment from UB.
	"We are focusing our scholarly interest on work that will
impact Buffalo and the surrounding region. The Center shows UB's
determination to be a national leader in making linkages between the
university and the city, which will allow UB to play a major role in
building America in the 21st century."