George Edwin Taylor

George Edwin Taylor (August 4, 1857 – December 23, 1925) was an American journalist, editor, political activist, and politician. In 1904, he was the candidate of the National Negro Liberty Party for President of the United States. He was the first African American to run for president.
Taylor was born free in Little Rock, Arkansas, because his mother was free. His father was enslaved. His mother took him to Alton, Illinois, where she died. He reached La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1865, where he lived with the family of a ship cook. After they left the city, he was placed in a foster home at age 10, and lived with that family until he was 20. He attended public school. He had early work experience in La Crosse as a journalist and labor/political activist. In 1891 Taylor left Wisconsin and moved to Oskaloosa, Iowa. He published a weekly newspaper, the Negro Solicitor. In the 1890s, Taylor shifted from being an Independent Republican to the Democratic Party.
In 1892, he was founder and president of the National Colored Men’s Protection League. In 1900 he was president of the National Negro Democratic League, the Negro bureau within the national Democratic Party. In 1904, Taylor joined the National Negro Liberty Party, a third party, and ran as its candidate for president of the United States. After the failure of his 1904 campaign, he returned to the Democratic Party.