Did George Edwin Taylor and Kamala Harris face the same challenges when they ran for office?

 



General Information on George Edwin Taylor

We have our first ever African American president candidate Georgia Edwin Taylor, he did not have the best start but he did succeed on what he wanted somewhat in 1904's election. Taylor became an orphan at the peak of the civil war and because of it he remained homeless as a child.One day he got onto a riverboat that left him in La Crosse, Wisconsin, from there he got adopted by an African American farm family. Then his life was starting to get better, he went to university to get an education and then after he got into the newspaper business. His word quickly rose up in popularity at that time, where there were tons of people who were following his articles. Many African Americans were blindly following the Republican party at the time because they wanted to abolish slavery, Taylor was not fine with that since he saw there was an issues with labor and he wanted to fix that. He then proceeds to start his campaign as president with the backing of National Negro Liberty Party. It went exactly as planned even though he did not win, he did not even pass 2,000 votes but what he wanted to achieve was to have attention on the issue at hand and that he got, and that he needed.

General Information on Kamala Harris

Ms. Harris ran for president in 2020 and had a hard lead in the beginning but because of her lacking a platform and her ideas being all over the place she lost that lead as quickly as she got it causing her to drop out from low funding and not being as popular as before. She is someone who has had experience being in some power before as she was a former attorney general of California and a former San Francisco district attorney.

Representative of their "time?"

Kamla Harris seems to be a person who knows what the people want or is one who listens to the people, either way she wants to give the people what they are asking for. George Edwin Taylor was a person who cared about his community and wanted the better for his people as well. Both of these candidates wanted the best for their people at the time, Harris wants to essentially reform our criminal justice system and Taylor wanted labor to be right for the people in his community, but is that what they really needed? For Harris it really seems like we need someone with the presidential or the vice president's power for the criminal justice system to be rebuilt since it has been messed up for the longest time so she can be seen as the representative of our time since we need someone like her to work out the kinks and bugs. People have made claims against Harris saying that she is doing the opposite to her claims and not even doing her own part on making it better but ignoring some issues that are not as popular as others. What she claims is need for our time but seems like her claims are empty which is not needed. On the other hand Taylor went full force with his claims and got with an independent party, so he wouldn't stray from his ideals by choosing democratic or republican, and followed what he believed in and he may have not became president but he got his word out there. Even with his little experience with government and being mostly just a person who makes newspaper he was able to change the area around him which can make him seem as the representative of his time but because he does not have much experience with government and politics, well not too much since he has some I cannot in full faith say he was the representative of his time since no one even took him seriously at first.

Challenges

Challenges, challenges, challenges, Taylor and Harris alike went through tons of challenges when they were running for office but they both went through similar but different ones. Taylor had issues where no one took his word seriously and had his name removed off of most ballots just because his skin colour was different from the majority. Harris had challenges when she ran for president that she could not have a solid word or platform and having everything jumbled up where she ended up loosing her popularity. Now that she is running as vice president she is facing challenges that her and Joe Biden have had issues or how she acted towards him during debates and people do not believe it is possible for them to work together because of it. Another issue she is suffering from is just like Taylor's where people are not taking her word seriously, could e because of her skin colour, could be from her saying one thing and then saying another, I believe it is a little of both. Essentially they went through two different challenges when they ran for office and had one that was slightly similar but not really.

Sources Consulted: 

https://www.wiproud.com/news/hidden-history-george-edwin-taylor/

https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/12/01/455267676/a-forgotten-presidential-candidate-from-1904

https://www.blackenterprise.com/black-history-month-son-slave-ran-president/

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/running-president-george-edwin-taylor-1904/

https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/4801.htm

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/us/politics/kamala-bio.html

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