Thelma Chiles Taylor

Thelma Ida May Mercer Chiles Taylor Lee (December 7, 1900 – May 30, 1984) was an American newspaper editor, journalist, poet, librarian, and educator. She was editor and owner of the Topeka Plaindealer, a weekly newspaper serving Black communities in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Missouri, from 1930 to 1932.

Chiles was born in Topeka, Kansas, the daughter of Nick Chiles^[1] and Minnie Elizabeth Morris Chiles.^[2][3] She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1923.^[4][5] She was a member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.^[2][6]

Taylor taught school in Gary, Indiana, and Chicago after college, and was a librarian at Virginia State College.^[2][7] She took over as editor and owner of the weekly Topeka Plaindealer in 1930,^[7][8] after her father died.^[9][10] She wrote an editorial supporting senator Henry J. Allen, a fellow newspaper owner.^[11]

In 1932 Taylor was appointed librarian of the Kansas Vocational School,^[12][13] and she wrote "State Capitol News", a column for The Kansas City American newspaper, on events on Topeka,^[14][15] including an appearance by Langston Hughes.^[16] She was vice-president of the Kansas Jeffersonian League in 1933.^[17] She spoke at a meeting of the C.M.E. Church council in 1935.^[18] In 1942 she lived in Kansas City, Missouri,^[19] and sponsored a women's book club and a bridge club.^[20][21] In 1945, she was a member of group representing Black women's organizations when it confronted Omar Bradley about racial segregation in veterans' hospitals.^[22]

Taylor was a member of the National Council of Negro Women^[23] and the National Negro Press Association. She also wrote and published poetry.^[2] Later in life, she worked as an education services officer at Wheeler Army Airfield in Honolulu.^[24]

Chiles married lawyer Euclid L. Taylor in 1924.^[25] They had a son, Nicholas, and divorced by 1930. She married newspaperman Davis Lee in 1936.^[26][27] She died in 1984, at the age of 83, in Wahiawā, Hawaii.^[24]