Susie King Taylor
Susan Taylor “Susie” Baker King (August 6, 1848 – 1912), teacher and nurse, achieved many firsts in a lifetime of overcoming adversity and helping elevate others out of slavery. As the author [in 1902] of Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers, she was the only African American woman to publish a memoir of her wartime experiences.
Taylor was born into slavery near Savannah, Georgia in 1848. Despite Georgia’s harsh laws against the formal education of African Americans, she attended two secret schools taught by black women. Her literacy proved invaluable not only to her but to other African Americans she educated during the war. She became free at the age of 14 when her uncle led her out to a federal gunboat plying the waters near Confederate-held Fort Pulaski.
Baker and thousands of other African American refugees found themselves seeking safety behind Union lines on the South Carolina Sea Islands. She soon attached herself to the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first black regiment in the US Army. Read the entire article at National Park Service.
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