Candacy Taylor

Candacy Taylor is a writer, photographer, and cultural documentarian whose research examines mobility, architecture, race, and the businesses that supported Black travelers. Overground Railroad studies the history and legacy of The Negro Motorist Green Book, the guide published from 1936 to 1966. Abrams Press released the original edition in 2020, using the subtitle The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America and combining archival research with photographs and surviving sites. Taylor’s fieldwork documents hotels, restaurants, service stations, and other places that enabled travel during segregation. The project expanded beyond the book into a Smithsonian traveling exhibition, for which she served as content specialist and curator, and into an adaptation for younger readers. Smithsonian Libraries records the work as a 360-page illustrated social history, while public-library programming identifies Taylor as a leading Green Book researcher. Her method joins cultural history to preservation: buildings and addresses become evidence of entrepreneurship, community networks, and practical choices made during American road journeys.