Taylor Electric Co. is one of the oldest family-owned Black businesses in the United States. It is also Chicago's oldest continuously operating Black-owned business. And the IBEW is proud to call its founder, Sam Taylor, one of our own.

Taylor was born in Montgomery, Ala., in 1896. As a teenager, he worked alongside his brothers at the Pratt City coal mines, a notoriously rough company town near Birmingham. By 1917, he had moved to Chicago during the Great Migration and found work stoking coal for a railroad, running a saloon, and sweeping floors at magazine publisher Cuneo Press. He also began to help his neighbor, Black electrician Robert Patterson, doing electrical work at the Pullman Co.

In 1922, Taylor completed a correspondence course to obtain his electrician's license from the city of Chicago. That year, he founded the Taylor Electric Co. with his chief assistant, Charles Stewart, the teenage son of Taylor's domestic partner. The company started by installing doorbells and lights in the Motor Row District, along with electrical maintenance work at Greer College. By the 1930s, Taylor wanted to take the next step and applied for union membership.

Segregationist attitudes at the time made it nearly impossible for Black men and women to join the trades. Successful stories were few and far between. But with the help of U.S. Rep. Oscar De Priest of Chicago, Taylor and a group of 50 Black electricians struck an agreement with Mike Boyle, business manager of Chicago Local 134. Instead of being granted full union membership, Taylor's group was awarded Charter 9362, allowing them to operate as an all-Black electrical union. Local 134 would use Charter 9362 members exclusively for projects on the South Side of the city.

This agreement continued up until the start of World War II. In 1941, under pressure from civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 to desegregate the defense industries. Just over a year later, all members of Charter 9362 were admitted as full members of Local 134.

In the following decade, Chicago's urban-renewal policies forced Taylor Electric to move from the city's South Side, but it continued to grow as a union shop. Rufus Taylor, Sam's eldest son, took over the business in 1969 alongside his older sister, Jessie Taylor Dinkins.

Together, they shifted from performing electrical work for small businesses to large-scale construction projects. Taylor Electric worked on major projects like the Sears Tower, the McCormick Place expansion and the People Mover at O'Hare Airport. In the early 1990s, Taylor Electric took over the electrical maintenance at what was then Comiskey Park (now Guaranteed Rate Field, where the White Sox play) and at the Bears' Soldier Field. The company's founder and pioneer, Sam Taylor, passed away in 1973.

Today, Taylor Electric is more than 100 years old and one of the most successful Black-owned businesses in the United States. It continues its strong family roots under the leadership of CEO Kendra Dinkins and COO Karen Dinkins, both granddaughters of Sam Taylor. It employs about 100 people.

Through Brother Taylor's determination and lifelong recognition of the importance of union labor, this century-old business continues to grow.