
Taylor's books chronicle the lives of several generations of the Logan family, from times of slavery to the Jim Crow era. She then spent two years with the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, and, after returning to the United States, earned a master's degree in journalism at the University of Colorado where she was instrumental in creating a Black Studies Program as a member of the Black Student Alliance.

As a young child she moved to Toledo, Ohio, where she attended Toledo's public schools and eventually graduated from the University of Toledo in 1965. Taylor was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1943, and is the great-granddaughter of a former slave who was the son of an African-Indian woman and a white landowner. In 2021, she won the Children's Literature Legacy Award.

She was awarded the 1977 Newbery Medal for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and the inaugural NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature in 2003. Taylor is known for exploring powerful themes of family and racism faced by African Americans in the Deep South, in works that are accessible to young readers. She is best known for her novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, part of her Logan family series. Mildred DeLois Taylor (born September 13, 1943) is a Newbery Award-winning American young adult novelist. NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature (2003)
