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Taylor married artist Bernard
Goss in 1939, and later had a daughter, Gayle. In the 1940s, while
teaching art at an elementary school, she constructed the egg tempera
painting, I’ve Been in Some Big
Towns. Margaret Taylor Goss and her husband later divorced. She then
went to teach at Dusable High School for twenty-three years. In 1947, her
first children’s book, Jasper, the
Drummin’ Boy, was published. Taylor Goss remarried on December 23,
1949 to Charles Gordon Burroughs. Her writing and artworks
soared thereafter. Her two additional children’s books published were: Did
You Feed My Cow? Rhymes and Games From City Streets and Country Lanes
(1955) and Whip Me Whop Me Pudding and Other Stories of Riley Rabbit and His
Fabulous Friends (1966). Her visual artworks include a watercolor, Ribbon
Man, Mexico City Market, inspired by her experience at the Institute
of Printing and Sculpture in New Mexico; an oil painting, Insect
(1963); a marble sculpture, Head
(1965); and two bronze sculptures, Black
Queen and Head (1963). The Burroughs’ founded the
Ebony Museum of African-American History (renamed the Dusable Museum of
African-American History) in their home in Chicago. Their aim was to make
art, history and literature on the Black experience accessible to the
community. The museum was eventually moved the Washington Park, with
Margaret Burroughs as the executive director. In 1967, she and Dudley
Randall of the Broadside Press edited an anthology of poems by Black
writers and leaders entitled, For
Malcolm: Poems in the Life and Death of Malcolm X. Margaret Burroughs
published her own book of poems, What
Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black? (1968), describing the effects
of racism on one’s mental state. Her poems, including, “ Open Letter
to Black Youth of Alabama and Other Places”, often send a message of
Black pride. Some poems encompass familial themes, such as, “Apology to
My Daughter for Apparent Neglect”, “ Lines for My Mother”, and “
Memorial for My Father”. Her second volume of poetry, Africa, My Africa, was published in 1970. The poems in this volume
explore the topics of slavery, African culture, and African life. Margaret Burroughs taught
humanities at Kennedy-King Community College between the years of 1969 and
1979. During the 1980s, she served on the Chicago District’s Board of
Education. She received many awards and honors for her achievements,
including a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Lewis University in Illinois,
as well as honorary degrees from the Art Institute of Chicago, where she
taught humanities in 1968, Chicago State, and Columbia colleges. A day was
named in her honor by Mayor Harold Washington on February 1, 1986.
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