Frances Taylor

Frances Fink Taylor (born Pearl Frances Finkelstein, July 10, 1909 – December 8, 1979) was a New York music and film critic and a lyricist whose best-known song, "Those Three Are on My Mind" (with music by Pete Seeger) was a lament for the murdered civil rights workers - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Early life Taylor was born Pearl Frances Finkelstein in New York City on July 10, 1909. Her parents were Louis and Ida (Rich) Finkelstein. Her father, born in Romania, operated a drugstore. Her mother, born in Russia, was the daughter of a rabbi. The family name was later shortened to Fink. Taylor studied at the New Jersey College for Women at Rutgers University and graduated from the Columbia University School of Journalism with a bachelor's degree in literature in 1930. Career After graduating from Columbia, Taylor worked as a writer and reporter for the tabloid New York Evening Graphic. A Columbia classmate, reminiscing more than 50 years later, said that "Frankie Fink ... wrote lurid stories about the sex intrigues of the famous and the infamous of those roisterous times." She may have written other kinds of stories for the Graphic as well; one article, in January 1932, for the paper's magazine was about defense attorney Samuel Liebowitz who a year later became defense attorney for the Scottsboro Boys. Taylor was a contributor to The Literary Digest in the 1930s. From 1934 to 1936 she was a reporter at The Washington Post, mostly covering motion pictures.