Susie Taylor

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Susie King Taylor, 1902

Susie King Taylor (born August 6, 1848 in Midway, Georgia ; † October 6, 1912 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was a teacher, author and the first African American Army nurse . As a born slave she learned to read and write forbidden and with her knowledge provided the soldiers of the 33rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment with education and care during the Civil War . She served with her husband for four years and, like many African American sisters, received no payment for it. After the war she was the only black woman to publish her memories of her experiences during the war. Taylor was also the first black woman to openly teach ex-slaves at her school in Savannah, Georgia ; children during the day and adults at night.

Childhood and youth

Susie King Taylor was born Susannah Ann Baker on August 6, 1848 on Grest Plantation in Liberty County, Georgia, the eldest of nine children of the slaves Hagar Ann Reed and Raymond Baker. Taylor's mother was a domestic slave, her father probably lived on a neighboring plantation, as a child of slaves Taylor also became the property of the Grests under the law of the time. The Grests were childless and treated the children very lovingly. This would greatly influence Taylor's later views on racial relations.

At the age of seven, Taylor was allowed to move with one of her brothers to live with her grandmother Dolly Reed in Savannah. Her grandmother was a freed slave and had built a business, she worked as a laundress and cleaning lady. She visited her daughter and grandchildren on the plantation every two months. Dolly Reed supported the education of black people, even if it was strictly prohibited under the laws of the state of Georgia . She sent Taylor to Woodhouse's illegal school, a free black woman. After Taylor had learned everything Woodhouse could teach her there, her grandmother organized other teachers, including a white student, the son of her landlord, and Mathilda Beasley, Georgia's first African-American Catholic nun; they all knew they were breaking the law.

In addition to basic education, Reed taught her granddaughter herself, as a healer she knew the plants and roots from which medicine could be made and passed this traditional form of healing on. When Reed was arrested for singing freedom songs in a church, Taylor had to go back to her mother in Liberty County.

Civil War

When the Civil War began in 1861, Taylor was 13 years old. Her uncle decided to bring the family to safety and fled with them on St. Catherines Island , an island off the coast of Georgia. There they were placed under the protection of the Union and brought to St. Simons Island in April 1862 . This island, occupied by the Union troops, was the target of many slaves, and there they, like Taylor, were freed. Within days, the officers noticed Taylor because of her writing and reading skills and they offered the young woman to get her books if she agreed to open a school for the freed slaves. She agreed and became the first black teacher at a freely operating school for freed slaves (so-called Freedmen's School ) in Georgia. Taylor taught 40 children during the day and an unknown number of adults at night. She taught there until the island was evacuated in October 1862.

While running the school on St. Simons Island, Taylor married Edward King, a black sergeant in the First South Carolina Volunteers of African Descent . The unit was founded on November 7, 1862 under the direction of the white Thomas Wentworth Hissinson. The Union Army obviously took the addition voluntary seriously, because the black soldiers received no payment for their service, although their commander Hissinson was very committed to them. When the government was finally ready to pay the black soldiers too, they received $ 10 because of their skin color, while their white comrades received $ 13. The men refused to take the money until they were all paid equally. Finally, in June 1864, a law was passed granting all men who were free at the start of the war as much as white soldiers. The law was later extended to all black men, but not to serving women. The unit was renamed the 33rd United States Colored Troops on February 8, 1864.

Flowers of the sassafras tree, a medicine used by traditional healers

For three years, Taylor served as a nurse and laundress in her husband and brother's unit. She also taught the soldiers in her spare time. When smallpox broke out in Taylor's regiment , brought in from England more than 100 years ago , Taylor's skills as a sister and traditional healer came to the fore. One of the important plants her grandmother had shown her was sassafras . It was used to purify the blood and helped reduce inflammation. She brewed large quantities of sassafra tea and drank it herself regularly. Although Taylor cared for and treated the men infected with smallpox, she did not develop it herself. As a nurse, she often visited the hospital for African American soldiers in Beaumont, South Carolina . There she met and worked side by side with Clara Barton the nurse who founded the American Red Cross after the war .

1866 to 1870

After the unit was disbanded at Fort Wagner in 1866, Taylor and King returned to Savannah. There Taylor immediately opened a school for the freed children, while her husband took a job as a dock worker. Edward King died in September 1866, shortly before giving birth to their first child. The cause of death is not known, but it is believed that he died in an industrial accident on the docks. Around this time, a public school opened near Taylor's paid school, forcing them to quit school. Taylor returned to Liberty County in 1867 to open a new school. After an incident in which Taylor slapped a white man, she returned to Savannah and taught freed slaves there for a small fee. She received no support from the aid organizations for freed slaves in the northern states. She also worked as a laundress at Camp Saxton.

From 1870

Taylor was unable to support her son on her meager income, so she took a job serving a wealthy white family in Boston . There she met Russell L. Taylor, also from Georgia, and married him on April 20, 1879. She returned to the south only occasionally. Taylor kept in touch with the former soldiers of her unit, the Grand Army of the Republic. To support the soldiers, she worked for the rest of her life for the Woman's Relief Corps , a national association for women veterans of the Civil War.

When Taylor's son was dying, she returned to the South one more time in the 1890s and stayed with him in Louisiana to care for him. During this time, she wrote her memoirs of the war, published in 1902, in Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops Late 1st SC Volunteers . This made Taylor the first and only black woman to describe the life of African American people during the Civil War. In it, she expresses her disappointment that black people were not treated equally even after the war. She herself made no distinction between blacks and whites. Taylor's memoirs provide a deeper insight into the lives of colored soldiers and a view of the relationships between gender and race. It describes the hope for freedom, the horror of war and the reality of racist institutions. Taylor's particular view of the Civil War offers a new perspective to understand the everyday life of black men and women serving the Union. After being the only black woman to deal with this subject, her view of it is unique from today's perspective.

Taylor died in Boston on October 6, 1912. She was buried next to her second husband at Mount Hope Cementary in Roslindale , Massachusetts .

Posthumous honors

In 2018, Taylor was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement Hall of Fame as a Native Daughter and Heroine of Freedom . In March 2019, the Georgia Historical Society set up a historical marker near the Midway First Presbyterian Church in Midway, Georgia. There, Taylor's life and her successes in medicine, education and literature are remembered.

literature

  • Robert C. Morris, Reading, 'Riting, and Reconstruction: The Education of Freedmen in the South, 1861-1870 ( Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1981).
  • King, Stewart, "Taylor, Susie Baker King" in Encyclopedia of Free Blacks & People of Color in the Americas , ( New York : Facts on File 2012), 762-763.
  • Taylor, Susie King, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp , in Collected Black Women's Narratives , edited by Anthony Barthelemy, Oxford : Oxford University Press , 1988.

Web links

Commons : Susie King Taylor  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Benjamin Galland: Island Time: An Illustrated History of St. Simons Island, Georgia 2013, University of Georgia ISBN 978-0820342450 (English) pp. 111-112
  2. ↑ Cheryl Hudson: Brave. Black. First .: 50+ African American Women Who Changed the World Crown Books, 2020 ISBN 978-0525645818 (English) Chap. Susie King Taylor
  3. ↑ a b Georgia Women of Achievement: Susie Baker King Taylor 2018 (English) accessed June 26, 2020
  4. ^ A b c Nursing Theory: Biography of Susie King Taylor (English) accessed on June 26, 2020
  5. ↑ a b c d Novella Nimmo: Keeping our History Healthy: Susie King Taylor National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, 2020 (English), accessed June 26, 2020
  6. ^ Espiritu, Allison, "Taylor, Susan (Susie) Baker King (1848-1912)" , BlackPast.org.
  7. ^ Susie King Taylor: Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops Late 1st SC Volunteers Boston, author, 1902 .
  8. ↑ Deborah White: Freedom on My Mind 2013, p. 358.
  9. ↑ Reina Pennington: Amazons to Fighter Pilots - A Biographical Dictionary of Military Women ( English ). Greenwood Press, 2003, ISBN 0-313-32708-4 , p. 428.
  10. ↑ Annika Jensen: A Visible Woman: Susie King Taylor Clara Barton Museum of March 31, 2017 (English) accessed on June 26, 2020
  11. ^ Find a Grave: Susie Taylor. Retrieved June 26, 202
  12. ↑ 2018 Induction Ceremony - Save the Date! .
  13. ↑ Georgia Historical Society: Marker Susie King Taylor (English) accessed June 26, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Taylor, Susie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Taylor, Susie King; Baker, Susannah (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION African American nurse, writer, and teacher
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Midway (Georgia)
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1912
Place of death Boston