Jasmine Swift on Margaret Taylor-Burroughs

Credits

Director: Jill Klein
DP: Sevdije Kastrati-Dill
2nd Camera: Johanna Coelho
Sound: Nancy Kwon
Editor: Elizabeth Saltzman
Color: Bill Dill
Dialogue Editor: Daniel Raphael
Producer: Courtney Graham

Topics

“The color of skin is a minor difference… that has been stretched out beyond its importance.”

Margaret Taylor-Burroughs said “The color of skin is a minor difference… that has been stretched out beyond its importance.” Taylor-Burroughs spent her long life acting on that belief, bringing people together as an artist, educator and institution builder. In her paintings and woodcuts she depicted blacks, whites and mixed people doing everyday things together as equals-- celebrating a child’s birthday, learning in a classroom— a lovely human vision, radical at the time. She founded lasting organizations— community centers, African-American art museums. She was unstoppable. Writer Jasmine Swift tells the story of this woman who held to her powerful simple vision of human equality and created a better world in that image.

Storyteller

Jasmine Swift

Jasmine Swift is a writer, originally from Atlanta, GA and currently based in Los Angeles, CA. Since 2014, Swift has worked in the entertainment industry on television shows and films such as The Man in the High Castle, Insecure, Ballers and Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky. She currently assists the creators of NBC’s newest drama, Council of Dads. Swift creates art that highlights people of color and women, seeking to inspire, increase representation, and bring about conversation and change. She received a Bachelor of Science in Business Marketing from Samford University.

Featured Woman

Margaret Taylor-Burroughs

Margaret Taylor-Burroughs was an American visual artist, writer, poet, educator, and arts organizer. She co-founded the Ebony Museum of Chicago, now the DuSable Museum of African American History. An active member of the African-American community, she also helped to establish the South Side Community Art Center, whose opening was dedicated by the First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt. Taylor-Burroughs was a prolific writer, with her efforts directed toward the exploration of the Black experience and to children, especially to their appreciation of their cultural identity and to their introduction and growing awareness of art.

WIKI