Richard K. Taylor, lifelong ‘warrior for peace,’ author, and social activist, has died at 91

Richard K. Taylor, 91, of Philadelphia, lifelong world peace activist, founder and former executive director of the Fair Housing Council of Delaware Valley, cofounder of Witness for Peace and Movement for a New Society, author, mentor, and humanitarian, died Monday, Oct. 14, of complications from age-associated issues at KeystoneCare Home Health and Hospice in Wyndmoor.

Mr. Taylor was born in Philadelphia’s Germantown Hospital in 1933. He grew up in Elkins Park as a Quaker, found fellowship at Abington and Germantown Friends Meeting, embraced the Catholic Church in the 1980s, and spent his life traveling the world to promote peace, equality, and justice.

He founded the Fair Housing Council in 1959, and later cofounded Witness for Peace, Movement for a New Society, the Philadelphia Life Center, and other social service and faith-based organizations to advance his efforts. He modeled Mahatma Gandhi, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Dorothy Day. His son, Dan, called him a “warrior for peace, nonviolence, and social justice.”

He worked on dozens of betterment projects and publicly confronted questionable U.S. government policies, human rights violations, housing discrimination, violence and torture around the world, environmental and economic controversies, war, and racism. He was a field staffer in the 1960s for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and he walked in the 1963 March on Washington.

He spoke Spanish and traveled to war-torn Nicaragua and El Salvador, rural Mexico, Guatemala, South Africa, and elsewhere to help the underserved and be what he called a “nonviolent deterrent” to local brutality. He was part of the 1971 nonviolent demonstrations against U.S. government policy regarding Pakistan and what became Bangladesh, and featured in the 2016 documentary Blockade.

“I’m especially concerned about all the torture practiced by governments that our government supports,” he told The Inquirer in 1982. In 1985, he said: “We want to create a more positive American influence.”

He fought for fair housing through the Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee and served in El Salvador as a conscientious objector. He taught college classes on social justice and later worked nine years for the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Commission for World Peace and Justice.

In 1990, he was one of several activists who toured the former Soviet Union during its collapse. His constant goal, his family said in a tribute, was to “bring truth to power.”

He and his wife, Phyllis, also a world peace activist, were featured in The Inquirer and other publications, and he spoke often about social justice issues on radio shows and at rallies and protests. Nearly 100 of his articles, papers, and pamphlets were published, and he produced videos and wrote a dozen books, guides, and manuals, including 1977′s Blockade: A Guide to Nonviolent Intervention and 1994′s Training Manual for Nonviolent Defense Against the Coup d’État.

He and his wife helped the Baker family painfully integrate Folcroft in 1963, and he told listeners at a 1990 world peace demonstration in Philadelphia that God “cares deeply about what we do to each other here on Earth.” He served as parish services coordinator and cochair of the African American Leadership Committee in the 1990s and helped integrate St. Vincent de Paul Church.

“He was a deep friend to so many,” his son said, “and mentor to thousands who heard his words, read his work, and watched him lead.“

Richard Knight Taylor was born Feb. 25, 1933. He was reared by his father and grandparents, and graduated from Germantown Friends School.

He earned a bachelor’s degree at Haverford College and a yearlong Rockefeller Brothers Theological Fellowship to the Yale Divinity School. He was interested in sociology and anthropology, and he studied at Cornell University and what is now the Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research.

He met fellow activist Phyllis Brody at a civil rights event in 1962, and they married in 1963, and lived in Germantown, West Mount Airy, and West Philadelphia. They reared son Daniel and daughter Deborah, and welcomed dozens of other children and families into their home and orbits for more than 60 years.

“They were tethered by love and respect for each other, and social justice from Day One,” their son said. Her motto was: “One leg is me. One leg is Dick.”

Mr. Taylor liked to hike, ski, canoe, and body surf. He was introspective and funny.

He was good at skipping stones, and he played guitar with “a sparkle in his eye,” his family said. He sang on buses and at demonstrations and detention centers. One of his favorite songs was “We Shall Overcome.”

“He was very moral, ethical, and dignified,” his wife said. “He had a presence around him.”

In addition to his wife and children, Mr. Taylor is survived by several grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and other relatives.

Services are to be held at 1:30 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 14, at Germantown Friends Meeting, 47 W. Coulter St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19144.

Donations in his name may be made to Face-to-Face, 123 E. Price St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19144; and Against Malaria Foundation, Citibank NA, Box 7247-6370, Philadelphia, Pa. 19170.