Susie King Taylor facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Susie King Taylor
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| Born |
Susan Ann Baker
August 6, 1848 |
| Died | October 6, 1912 (age 64) |
| Resting place | Mount Hope Cemetery, Roslindale, Massachusetts |
| Citizenship | American |
| Known for | Being the first Black nurse during the American Civil War |
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Susie King Taylor (August 6, 1848 – October 6, 1912) was the first Black nurse during the American Civil War. Beyond nursing the wounded of the 1st South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Taylor was the first Black woman to self-publish her memoirs. She was the author of Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers. She was also an educator to formerly bonded Black people in the postbellum South and opened various schools in Georgia. Taylor would also be a part of organizing the 67 Corps of the Women's Relief Corps in 1886.
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Childhood
Susie King Taylor, born Susan Ann Baker, was the first of nine children born to Raymond and Hagar Ann Reed Baker on August 6, 1848. She was born into slavery on a plantation owned by Valentine Grest on the Isle of Wight in Liberty County, Georgia. Taylor was a member of the Gullah peoples of the coastal lowlands of Georgia, South Carolina and Florida.
When she was about seven years old, her grandmother Dolly Reed was allowed by the plantation owner to take Taylor to go live with her in Savannah, Georgia. She moved to her grandmother's house with her younger brother and sister.
Education
Taylor's grandmother would send her and her brother to be educated through something known as an "underground education." Under Georgia law, it was illegal for enslaved people to be educated. Taylor and her brother would be taught by a friend of Dolly's, a woman known as Mrs. Woodhouse. She was a free woman of color that lived a half mile away from Taylor's house. Mrs. Woodhouse would have the students enter one at a time with their books covered to keep from drawing too much attention by the police or the local white population. Taylor would attend school with about 25 to 30 children which would last for another two years.
After that, she was taught by another free woman of color, Mrs. Mary Beasley, (Savannah's first black nun) who would continue to educate Taylor until May 1860. Mrs. Beasley told her grandmother that she had taught Taylor all that she knew and would have to get someone else to continue.
Dolly worked continuously to support the education of her granddaughter. Taylor would become friends with a white playmate named Katie O’Connor who attended a local convent. Her new friend agreed to continue to give Taylor lessons if she promised not to tell anyone. After four months, this would end due to O’Connor going into the convent permanently. Lastly, Taylor would be educated by the son of their landlord, a boy named James Blouis until he entered the Civil War.
The ability to read and write would later give Susie King Taylor power and protection for people of color both those free and in bondage. As a young child, she would write passes that would give some amount of security to Black people who were out on the street after the curfew bell was rung at nine o’clock each night. This would help keep the pass holders from being arrested by the watchman and placed in a guardhouse until the fines were paid by their master or guardian in order to release them.
American Civil War
Teacher
As the Civil War began, Taylor was sent back to the country to her mother on April 1, 1862. When fleeding from war with her uncle's family, she met the commander of the Union fleet boat, Captain Whitmore. He asked her where she was from and if she could read and write. When he learned that she could, he handed her a notebook and asked her to write her name and where she was from.
Three days after she came to St. Simon's Island, Commodore Goldsborough visited her and asked to take charge and create a school for the children on the island. She agreed to do so, provided she be given the necessary books for study. She received the books and testaments from the North and began her first school.
At the age of thirteen, Susie King Taylor founded the first free African-American school for children, and also became the first African-American woman to teach a free school in Georgia. During the day, Taylor educated more than forty children, and at her night school, adults attended her classes.
The 33rd Regiment Colored Troops
In October 1862, Susie was enrolled with the army as a laundress and served with the 33rd Regiment Colored Troops. During this time she married Edward King, a non-commissioned officer in the Company E regiment.
Throughout their time in the regiment, both Susie and her husband, Sergeant Edward King, continued to expand the education of many colored soldiers by teaching them how to read and write in their spare time. Although Susie's occupation title was laundress, she spent little time doing these duties. Rather, she packed haversacks and cartridge packs for the soldiers to use in combat and carried out orders for the commanders. She is also believed to have been entrusted with rifled muskets by the regiment's officers and rumored to be a dead shot. She was even trusted to engage in active picket line duty, contributing more to the war than education and nursing services.
Nurse
In her memoirs published in 1902, Taylor shares many of the sickening sights she encountered and how willing she was to help the wounded. She did everything she could to and trying to alleviate their pain and cared for them while serving with the regiment.
Susie King freely gave her service willingly to the U.S. Colored Troops for four years and three months and never received any pay. In February 1862, she shared about how she assisted with helping nurse a comrade in the military company she was serving with during the American Civil War.
She also helped in the recovery of smallpox as she had been vaccinated for the disease. During her time as a nurse, she met Clara Barton, who later founded the American Red Cross. Taylor visited the hospital at Camp Shaw in Beaufort, South Carolina and would tend to the wounded and sick.
After the Civil War
After the American Civil War ended and the Reconstruction Era began, Susie and her husband Edward King, left the 33rd regiment and returned to Savannah, Georgia.
Taylor opened a school for African-American children, whom she called the "children of freedom," and an adult night school on South Broad Street. Edward tried to find a job in his trade as a carpenter. He was a skilled carpenter but he could bot find a position because of strong prejudices against the newly freed African Americans. In September 1866, Edward King died a few months before his child with Susie was born. Edward King died in a docking accident while he worked as a longshoreman.
It is not clear how many schools Taylor opened, but she had to eventually closed them all. At that time, charter schools for African Americans were established and she could no longer make a living through teaching. Susie put her baby with her mother and took the job as a domestic servant to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Green, a wealthy white family. In 1870, she traveled with the Greens to Boston for the summer, and while there Susie won a prize for her excellent cooking at the fundraiser the ladies held to raise fund to build an Episcopal Church.
Taylor would travel again to Boston in 1874 and entered into service for the Thomas Smith family in the Boston Highlands. After the death of Mrs. Smith, she next served Mrs. Gorham Gray, of Beacon Street. Taylor remained there until she married Russell L. Taylor in 1879.
Civil rights activism
During the Reconstruction Era, Taylor became a civil rights activist after witnessing much discrimination in the South, where Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan mocked and terrorized African Americans. In her book, Taylor mentions the constant lynching of Blacks and how southern laws were against anyone who was not white.
Towards the end of her life, Taylor sought to provide aid to Afro-Cubans after the end of the Spanish American War. Taylor noticed that Afro-Cubans were being discriminated against in a similar way to what African Americans faced during Reconstruction. Her history as an educator also fueled her activism as she challenged the Union Daughters of the Confederacy in their campaign to rid slavery from school curriculums.
Women’s Relief Corps
Susie King Taylor was part of the organizing of Corps 67 of the Women's Relief Corps in 1886. She held many positions, including guard, secretary, and treasurer. In 1893, she was elected president of corps 67. In 1896, in response to an order to take a census of all of the Union Veterans now residing in Massachusetts, she helped create a complete roster for the veterans of the American Civil War which would benefit many of her comrades. Susie King Taylor was specifically a member of the all black corps in Boston, Massachusetts called the Robert A. Bell Post.
Death
Susie King Taylor died on October 6, 1912, aged 64.
She was buried in 1912 at Boston's Mount Hope Cemetery in the same plot as her husband, Russell L. Taylor (1854–1901). In 2019, a researcher discovered that Susie's name had not been added to the headstone. In October 2021, Boston mayor Kim Janey dedicated a new memorial headstone which included Ms. Taylor's name and likeness, paid for by the Massachusetts branch of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.
Interesting facts about Susie King Taylor
- In 2018, Taylor was inducted to the Georgia Women of Achievement Hall of Fame for her contributions to education, freedom, and humanity during her lifetime. Aside from being the first Black army nurse, Taylor was also the first Black woman to teach in a school dedicated to the education of former slaves. Between 1866 and 1868, she opened and taught at least at three schools all in the state of Georgia.
- In 2015, the Susie King Taylor Community School was dedicated in her birthplace of Savannah, Georgia. A few miles from the school, near the Midway First Presbyterian Church, stands the first historic marker for Taylor. This marker was constructed in 2019 by the Georgia Historical Society and commemorates Taylor's life and career in education, literature, and medicine.
- The Susie King Taylor Women's Institute and Ecology Center was established in 2015 in Midway, Georgia by historian Hermina Glass-Hill.
Susie King Taylor quotes
- "There are many people who do not know what some of the colored women did during the war. There were hundreds of them who assisted the Union soldiers by hiding them and helping them to escape."
- "Justice we ask,—to be citizens of these United States, where so many of our people have shed their blood with their white comrades, that the stars and stripes should never be polluted."
