SOUTH BEND — “Why me?”
That was the question that plagued Marguerite Taylor’s mind when she got the call from The History Museum to inform her that she was chosen as the 2026 recipient of The African American Legacy Award.
Taylor was one of nine people nominated to receive the award and was the “resounding winner” among those nominees, as described by Brian Harding, the executive director of The History Museum.
Taylor will be honored with the 2026 African American Legacy Award at The History Museum’s annual Juneteenth reception on Tuesday, June 9.
But if you ask Taylor, she is still in shock that she was even nominated — let alone chosen as the sole award recipient.
“I wondered, ‘Why me?’ Because I do what I like. I do what makes me feel good about me, not what makes other people feel good about me,” Taylor said. “My mother always taught [her children] to be true to yourself and do what makes you happy.”
Her late mother, Renelda Robinson, is the namesake for the University of Notre Dame’s Robinson Community Learning Center (RCLC), which Taylor played an “instrumental” role in establishing, according to the center’s website.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Humble beginnings
Taylor was born and raised in the 700 block of North Frances Street in South Bend. She was the eldest of eight children, including a twin. Growing up, she watched her mother closely.
“She was a terrible cook — terrible. But don’t tell her,” Taylor joked.
As a child, Taylor remembers asking her grandmother why her Aunt Mary was such a good cook but her mother “couldn’t boil eggs.” The answer: Taylor’s mother was out playing baseball with the boys instead of learning how to cook with her sister — defying gender stereotypes of the early 20th century.
By the 1940s, Robinson was a founding member of the Renelda Robinson and Uncle Bill’s All-Colored Softball Team in South Bend, as The Tribune previously reported.
In her daughter’s eyes, cooking was her mother’s only shortfall.
“We thought we were rich,” Taylor said. “We were as poor as the person down the street — but my mother always made it happen.”
Robinson’s kindness also afforded other young mothers in the South Bend area the ability to “ma[ke] it happen” when their paycheck did not.
Taylor described how her mother had connections with a nearby pharmacist when the Robinson family moved to the corner of Corby Boulevard and Madison Street.
When other mothers in the area fell short of being able to buy diapers or other healthcare necessities for their families, Robinson would send them up to her pharmacist on the corner and cover whatever they needed with her account.
“She would do stuff like that because that’s just who she was,” Taylor said.
In her own adulthood, Taylor said, she is just as poor of a cook as her mother, but she inherited Robinson’s same zest for life and value toward volunteering in the community.
“I think I’m more like [my mother] than I think,” she said.
Going door-to-door
Taylor, now 83, has outlived her ex-husband and two sons — but her first experience as an advocate was on behalf of her children.
Although she and her husband divorced when their children were 4 and 6 years old, the couple initially bought the family home — which Taylor still occupies today — because of its “blooming neighborhood” within the John Adams school district.
However, when Taylor’s eldest son was in junior high, the South Bend Community School Corporation (SBCSC) implemented “Plan Z,” a comprehensive desegregation and redistricting plan formally adopted in 2002 by SBCSC to comply with a 1980s federal court consent decree, according to the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse website.
Taylor said adoption of Plan Z would have required her children to attend South Bend’s Clay High School — “Some butthole changed the boundaries” — in an effort to stabilize diversity percentages across the school corporation.
She was not a fan.
“What started me on this journey [of advocacy] was I knocked on 19 doors, and I knew all of them,” Taylor said. “I begged people to come to the school board meetings. That’s why my journey started. It was personal.”
Plan Z still went into effect in 2003, but “I said, ‘That’s not happening,’” Taylor recalled, matter-of-fact.
Taylor told her children’s school counselor she had moved — but in reality — she changed her children’s residential address to her mother’s, which was still located in the John Adam’s district, finding a way to “ma[ke] it happen” like she was raised to.
‘I’ve had a good life’
In the more than two decades since she first went door-to-door, Taylor’s journey as an advocate has remained “personal.”
In 2000, Taylor was a founding member of South Bend Heritage Foundation’s Northeast Neighborhood Revitalization Organization (NNRO), which has worked for more than a quarter of a century to restore homes in the city’s northeast neighborhood, creating more diverse and welcoming places to live, according to its website.
When RCLC first opened in 2001 — two years after her mother’s death in 1999 — Taylor was the center’s first employee and “spent 20 years representing the RCLC on a number of community boards and organizations, making sure the best interests of the center, as well as the entire northeast neighborhood, were considered,” according to the center’s website.
Her combined years of service at RCLC and NNRO earned Taylor a honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Notre Dame in May 2023. At 80-years-old, she was the first South Bend community member to receive such an honorary degree, according to an RCLC June 2023 news release.
“Marguerite is just so representative of all of the basic criteria [for the African American Legacy Award]. … She’s been involved in so many organizations and dedicated her life to improving and making lasting relationships, inspiring youth and making a difference for African Americans and all individuals within our community,” The History Museum’s Harding said.
Although Taylor could identify a moment in her life that propelled her into a life of bettering her community, she was unable to pinpoint one that was most significant. “They’re all significant to me,” she said.
In that same vein, Taylor could not identify one person, specifically, who helped shape her. Instead, she fondly remembers how in-sync her parents were after 56 years of marriage.
“Your life, a lot of times, is shaped by the environment you’re in … [My siblings and I] came from stability,” Taylor said. “So I can’t just say, ‘My mother did A,’ or ‘My father did B,” or ‘My grandmother did C.’ We just came from a really stable household.”
Today, Taylor resides in the same home she raised her two children in on the northeast side of South Bend. Though she is surrounded by dozens of accolades that cover her walls and coffee table, many of which are accompanied by their own title, her favorite possession is the three generations of family photos atop her wood-burning fireplace mantel — and favorite title is none other than her own name.
Upon receiving her honorary doctoral law degree, Taylor said, her friends and family were excited to call her “doctor,” but she urged them not to, insisting in good nature that the degree was “fake,” or unearned, because she had not completed the required hours of laborious coursework.
“I’ve had a good life … [but] I never ever helped or did stuff because I thought it would give me recognition — because I never knew I got anything until I got it — and that’s the God’s honest truth,” Taylor said.
As modest as she is, Taylor understands the impact of her decades of service to the community, and she continues to be grateful to have made such an impact.
“I must be doing something right, and I must be doing something that makes a difference in someone else’s life,” she said. “I am totally fulfilled that someone saw what I didn’t see.”
African American Legacy Award Juneteenth Reception
● When: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 9
● Where: The History Museum, 897 Thomas St., South Bend
● Cost: $60; reservations are due Sunday, June 7
● For more information: Call 574-235-9664 or visit historymuseumsb.org.
Email South Bend Tribune summer 2026 intern Katherine Hill at KTHill@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend’s Marguerite Taylor to be honored for lifetime of service
Reporting by Katherine Hill, South Bend Tribune / South Bend Tribune
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Katherine Hill, South Bend Tribune | USA TODAY Network
