SPEAKING
AMERICA • ART • CLASS • DINER CULTURE • RACE • TRAVEL • WOMEN • WORK
Candacy Taylor is an award-winning author and photographer who has been a national keynote speaker for 20 years. She develops multimedia presentations that inspire solution-oriented conversations about women, race, labor, aging, and making a living as an artist. She has traveled over 500,000 miles throughout the United States documenting beauty shop culture (American Roots), diner waitresses (Counter Culture), Route 66, and female bullfighters (By the Horns).
Taylor’s most recent project is her bestselling book, Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America. It was one of the New York Times’ most notable books of 2020, Oprah Magazine's top 26 travel books, and National Geographic’s top 10 list of books by women. Taylor also curated The Negro Motorist Green Book exhibition which was based on Overground Railroad and toured by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) to 14 museums from 2020-2025.
OVERGROUND RAILROAD
This talk features the story of the Green Book, offering a rich opportunity to reexamine America’s story of segregation, Black migration, and the rise of the Black leisure class from the 1930s to the 1960s. It also documents the indelible scars that redlining, urban renewal, gentrification, and mass incarceration have left on today’s communities where Green Book sites once thrived.
The paperback edition of Overground Railroad will be published in 2026. The hardback edition was published in 2020, and a young adult version (ages 12+) was published in 2022.
VIDEO LINKS
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - Mapping the Green Book video
COUNTER CULTURE: THE AMERICAN DINER WAITRESS
Candacy Taylor is the author of Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress which features a resilient group of diner waitresses from 50 to 84 years old. These hardworking women have raced to our tables and have brought meaning, comfort, and culture to the American roadside dining experience. Taylor interviewed and photographed waitresses in forty-three US cities who’ve worked in the same diners for as much as 60 years. The talk features audio clips of their eye-opening commentary and busts myths about women and aging, and it also explains why they love their honorable profession.
THE ROOTS OF ROUTE 66
Taylor wrote a Moon Travel guide on Route 66 and has documented changes along the Mother Road over the last 20 years. During its heyday, nearly half of all the counties on Route 66 banned Black people from entering after sundown. This talk examines the gulf between our nostalgic reimagining of the postwar “happy days” and the fabled highway’s idealized past that never was.
VIDEO LINKS
VICE ABANDONED - ROUTE 66 (I'm at the 35-minute mark)
AMERICAN ROOTS: BEAUTY SHOP CULTURE ACROSS AMERICA
This talk untangles the story of Americans and their hair. It pulls back the curtain on salon culture by featuring an institution that is rooted in rituals as diverse as this country. Due to the differences in our hair texture and the skill sets required to style it, beauty shops are among the most racially segregated businesses in America. Other contributing factors include language and the desire to provide an intimate space where culture can be expressed in comfort. Taylor traveled over 26,000 miles throughout America interviewing stylists that serve African American, Appalachian, Cajun, Dominican, Gullah-Geechee, Jamaican, Japanese, Jewish (Orthodox), Pakistani, and LGBTQ+ communities.
BY THE HORNS: FEMALE BULLFIGHTERS
After being tossed in the air by a 700-pound bull, trampled, and then gored in the stomach, bullfighter Cristina Sánchez said, “I can’t wait to get back in the ring. To be in front of a bull is a feeling so great that it can’t be described. Outside the ring, I am a normal, shy girl. But in the ring, I am transformed. I'm not a girl anymore, I am a bullfighter."
This talk captures the struggle and the triumphs of this fascinating subculture of women who have a history of performing with bulls since 2000 B.C. It focuses on bloodless bullfights along Texas border towns and central California. Rather than taking a position on the ethics of bullfighting, instead it centers on the cultural and symbolic implications of women gaining access, and anchoring an undeniable presence in this machismo-dominated industry.
VIDEO
MAKING A LIVING AS AN ARTIST
Taylor's work has been archived at the Library of Congress, celebrated by dozens of media outlets, and funded by numerous organizations, including National Geographic, the National Park Service and the National Trust. She couldn’t have made a comfortable living without having employed the key strategies to secure fair contracts with significant institutions such as The Smithsonian, Harvard University, and the Library of Congress.
This talk is designed for a broad audience of creatives, scholars, artists, filmmakers, photographers, and writers. Taylor will share the negotiating tactics she wished she’d known earlier in her career that allow her to retain and control rights to her work. She’ll discuss the agreements she refused to sign to protect her content, and the strategies she used to adapt her book into a play and television series with ABC.
SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS (SELECTED CHRONOLOGICALLY)
Automotive Hall of Fame
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. MEMORIAL LIBRARY - Washington DC
SUSAN B. ANTHONY GALA - Rochester, NY. Keynote Speaker
DESTINATIONS INTERNATIONAL - Dallas, TX., Travel Industry Award
THE PEACE & JUSTICE AWARDS CEREMONY Harrisburg, PA., Keynote
THE HOLOCAUST MUSEUM - Houston, TX
EXXONMOBIL HEADQUARTERS -Houston, TX
THE AUTOMOTIVE HALL OF FAME AWARD CEREMONY- Detroit, MI
HISTORY COLORADO - Denver, CO
THE CALIFORNIA MUSEUM - Sacramento, CA
THE RAMAZ SCHOOL- New York, NY. Mapping Mobility in America
NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION - Washington, DC.
JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL - San Francisco, CA
EITELJORG MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN - Indianapolis, IN,
JIMMY CARTER MUSEUM - Atlanta, GA,
THE INSTITUTE ON AGING - San Francisco, CA
In conversation with Kevin Young at the Schomburg Center
THE SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR BLACK RESEARCH - New York, NY
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS- Washington, DC., Women Documenting the World
THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL - Washington, DC. Overground Railroad presented at the US Capitol before Congress
NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL INSURANCE HEADQUARTERS- Milwaukee, WI
ROUTE 66 ROADFEST: Tulsa, OK
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY ON AGING CONFERENCE -Philadelphia, PA. & Anaheim, CA.
THE BAY AREA BOOK FESTIVAL-Berkeley, CA
BROWN UNIVERSITY–Providence, RI. Documenting Subcultures
THE CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS–San Francisco, CA
THE CALIFORNIA MUSEUM - Sacramento, CA.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY - In conversation with Deborah Willis Cambridge, MA. Photography
JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL - San Francisco Bay Area, CA. Overground Railroad
THE KNIGHT FOUNDATION & THE MIAMI BOOK FAIR - Miami, FL. Overground Railroad
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - Washington, DC. Women Documenting the World
THE NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM - Atlanta, GA
THE NATIONAL TRUST - Washington DC.
THE NATIONAL WOMEN’S STUDIES ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE–Atlanta, GA.
NEON SPEAKS - San Francisco, CA. Neon Signage in Overground Railroad
THE NEW SCHOOL - New York, NY. Making a Living as an Artist
THE PETERSEN AUTOMOTIVE MUSEUM - Los Angeles, CA. Route 66 and the Green Book
SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE - Bronxville, NY.
SPELMAN COLLEGE - Atlanta, GA.
THE SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE - Oxford, MI. Counter Culture.
WOMEN’S LITERARY FESTIVAL –Santa Barbara, CA. Counter Culture