Y. B. Taylor

Y.B. TAYLOR was born in 1954, the same year as the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision - Brown v. the Board of Education. Her early and formative years included experiences of segregation and bigotry; some are remembered and others were told to her so frequently, she thinks she remembers. She has encountered and broken color barriers.

In 1966, Y.B. Taylor was one of six African American students that integrated Richmond Public School’s Albert H. Hill Junior High. Having attended a segregated elementary school, Albert Hill was Y.B. Taylor’s first experience with whites on a daily basis. There were harrowing experiences as well as life lessons learned.

As a result of legislated busing, Y.B. Taylor was enrolled her junior and senior years of high school in the newly annexed area of Richmond, formerly Chesterfield County, after her sophomore year at Thomas Jefferson High School. At Huguenot High, she claimed a page in the school’s history as its first African American varsity cheerleader (Thank you mom for advocating on my behalf!), first African American homecoming queen, and first African American to write a regular column, “Yonnie Bee’s Bag,” for the student-run newspaper. In 1972, she was one of two first-time African American contestants in the Miss Chesterfield Beauty Pageant. Both contestants made it to the finals.

In 1976, 19-years after Walter N. Ridley became the University of Virginia’s first African American to earn a degree and 4-years after undergraduate admissions was fully open to women, Y.B. Taylor received her B.A. in Afro American Studies from the university.

For a period of eleven-years, Y.B. Taylor was immersed in corporate America’s world of banking and finance. Often, in the vernacular of the black community, she found herself to be the “only fly in the ointment,” a term she found herself explaining to white co-workers on numerous occasions.

Y.B. Taylor’s life experiences, experiences of others as well as history as it pertains to African Americans are projected in her poetry. She expresses her perceptions of life knowing many will not always agree with her. Y.B. Taylor tells anyone who inquires, she has neither interest nor inclination to write a novel. In fact, it was never her intent to publish more than one book, which was a TTD (Thing To Do) on her bucket list. Her first book of poetry, "What I Know ...," was published as a gift to her daughters so they would have something to remember of her, to share and pass on. One day, she would like to flesh out her poem, I Am Here Because …, into an illustrated children’s book.

Y.B. Taylor resides in Glen Allen, Virginia, with her husband. They are proud parents of two successful adult daughters; the older and her husband reside in Brooklyn, New York, with their French Bulldog, May, and the younger resides in Richmond, with her husband, and their cats, June and Cricket.