William Lewis Taylor (October 4, 1931 – June 28, 2010) was an American attorney and lobbyist who advocated on behalf of African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement and played a major role in drafting civil rights legislation. Early life and education Taylor was born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where he was harassed by his anti-Semitic Italian neighbors, later recalling of his youth that "I remember being pushed around as a kid and being called a 'Christ killer'". In speeches over the years he said that as a Jewish teenager he had experienced anti-Semitism in a neighborhood that Jews shared mainly with Italians. He first became aware of anti-African American prejudice when he saw whites harassing Jackie Robinson, when he stepped over the baseball color line while playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Taylor attended Brooklyn College, where he was editor of the school paper but was suspended by the college's president for publishing an article that alleged that a professor had been declined tenure based on his political views. College president Harry D. Gideonse ordered the paper closed after two issues, believing the paper to be Communist-influenced, telling Taylor that "I hate to ruin anyone's career, but in your case, I'm prepared to make an exception." A decade after he graduated from the college in 1952, officials at the college implored federal officials not to hire him for a government job, saying that he had "espoused liberal causes such as the rights of the Negro in the South". Brooklyn College awarded Taylor an honorary degree in 2001, with college president Christoph M. Kimmich calling Taylor "a person who represents what this institution is all about". In 1954, he earned his LL.B. degree from Yale Law School. He later taught at Columbus School of Law of The Catholic University of America, Georgetown University Law Center and at Stanford Law School. During the 1950s, Taylor was a successful contestant on the Tic-Tac-Dough game show, where he had been offered answers by the producers, which he refused to accept. After appearing before a grand jury investigation of cheating on quiz shows, the jury foreman informed him that he had been the most successful of any of the show's contestants who had not cheated. Legal career Taylor worked with Thurgood Marshall at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, assisting in civil rights cases that arose in the wake of the United States Supreme