Virtual Parlor Chat: While We Are Still Here with Karen Taylor

Karen D. Taylor is the founder and executive director of While We Art Still Here, a 501 (c)(3) organization formed as a response to the threat that 409 and 555 Edgecombe history faced partially due to the passing of time, and partially due to  “gentrification,” which is rapidly altering the neighborhood of Sugar Hill and surrounding areas. Ms. Taylor will discuss her current initiative, SIGNS OF THE TIMES: Harlem Heritage Markers Project, which will install 25 local historic markers in the community in Spring 2023. 

Ms. Taylor is driven by her passion to bring the cultural history of Harlem to the forefront of now, and to keep it relevant for generations to come. Inspired by the national discussion on “gentrification,” she is moved to steward the creation of programming that wraps the arts and humanities in a package that is a gift to the future. She consults as the director of public history for Columbia University/Teachers College’s Harlem Education History Project. She holds an MFA in Writing (Creative Nonfiction) from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a BS in African-American Literature from the State University of New York, Empire State College. She has been a Harlem resident for more than thirty years.