By Kenneth Mullinax/ASU
On July 24, Alabama State University lost an employee whose reputation nationwide was gargantuan within the circles of genealogists and historians who specialize in the family histories of Black Americans, especially those who were the descendants of slaves.
Frazine Taylor, who was a staff member at the Levi Watkins Learning Center (LWLC) working as an archivist and genealogist, will be sorely missed shared Dr. Janice Franklin, dean of the LWLC and executive director of ASU's National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African American Culture. Franklin hired Taylor to work at ASU.
"We are all still suffering a tremendous loss and are still grieving over Frazine's passing," Franklin stated. "She did so much to help advance us within the library, our Archives department, and especially through the positive publicity she garnered for us due to the many national television profiles, magazine stories and newspaper articles written about her great ability in genealogy and history."
"She can never be replaced."
Taylor's research on the heritage of Black families was recognized by myriad national news outlets that brought her name before millions of U.S. residents through such diverse entities as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone Magazine, NBC National News and many others who all ventured to ASU's library (LWLC) to interview her. Most recently, the list included an article published in October 2023 that appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, as well as a soon-to-be-aired nationwide television story on the CBS Evening News' Eye on America segment.
Taylor's ASU supervisor was Dr. Howard Robinson, who serves as the LWLC's associate director of achieves and cultural heritage. He shared that ironically, it was Taylor who first served as the catalyst for his interest in Black history. Before coming to ASU, he worked for her at The Alabama Department of Achieves and History where her skills and knowledge are legend.
"Ms. Taylor was an inspiration to me for the last many decades. She was a positive force across the nation in genealogy and in African American history," said Robinson, himself a noted expert in Civil Rights history. "Frazine was extraordinary because of her dedication and understanding of geneology, history and how to conduct the proper research to obtain the answers desired."
A resident of Wetumpka, before joining ASU, Taylor was with the Alabama Department of Archives and History for many years as its "head of Ready Reference" where she oversaw the agency’s research, both in print and online, and worked with individuals researching their family trees.
"Frazine's commitment to helping the public have greater access to their family members’ data, especially of those who were African American, is numerous, successful and well known," stated Steve Murry, director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. "There are a large and complex set of difficulties in assimilating the history of African American families, especially for those who lived before 1870 in Alabama and in the South due to being slaves, since very few slaves had last names during the antebellum period. However, Frazine, through her years of study, had ways to overcome these challenges and even wrote a book in 2008 on it titled 'Researching African American Genealogy in Alabama - A Resource Guide.’"
ASU's Robinson explained that Taylor not only had a great reputation among those whom she helped but also among her peers in historic preservation and archives.
"She won too many awards and recognitions for us to list them all at one time, yet I would be remiss not to mention her winning the most prestigious national award in her field, which is the Dorothy Parker Wesley Award which she received in 2022. It recognized her efforts as an information professional working to preserve African American history," quipped Robinson.
Robinson explained that as intellectual as she was academically, that she also had a "folksy" way about her, which allowed her to be close with individuals who had doctoral degrees as well as just "plain old people" who never attended college.
"Like Harvard's Dr. Henry Lewis Gates on PBS Television's 'Finding Your Roots,' Frazine Taylor was also a trailblazer in genealogical research and history, who helped people discover family members who otherwise they would have never known. That is among the many aspects which made her such an awesome person and scholar," stated Robinson.