Hidden Gems in Black History: The Oldest Family-Owned Black Business

Taylor Electric Company is one of the oldest family-owned Black businesses in the United States. It is also Chicago’s oldest continuously operating Black-owned business, and its history is intricately connected to the city. Sam Taylor Founder Sam Taylor arrived in Chicago from Alabama coal mines during the Great Migration with a sixth-grade education and maybe a warrant for murdering his brother’s killer. According to his son Rufus Taylor, he worked stoking coal for a railroad, operating a tavern, and cleaning floors at Cuneo Press, a magazine publisher, in Chicago. He also helped his neighbor, Black electrician Robert Patterson, with Pullman Company electrical work. Taylor also found his first possible employee in Charles Stewart, son of Annie Stewart, with whom he lived for years. He raised the youngster as a son and apprentice. Taylor noticed an advertisement on the back of a magazine, presumably at Cuneo, offering a correspondence school to become a certified electrician. Charles Stewart said a Greek-American buddy submitted the course under his name when the firm refused to deliver it to a Black guy. Sam Taylor attended the course and received his electrician’s license in 1922, maybe Chicago’s first for an African American. Taylor Electric Company Motor...