Trailblazers

Sanctuary celebrates Susie King Taylor for her bravery and unselfish service with the first Black Civil War regiment in their fight for America’s freedom.

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Susie King Taylor
​(1848-1912)
Photo: Library of Congress

Susie King Taylor was born in 1848 under the slave law in Savannah, Georgia. She exhibited remarkable intelligence and determination from an early age. Sent to a free woman by her grandmother to learn to read and write, she wrapped her books in paper to prevent the police or a white person from seeing them.

By the tender age of 13, the war had begun and when the Union soldiers descended on Fort Pulaski, an uncle escaped with her and others to the protection of a Yankee fleet. The boat’s captain, amazed that the young girl was so literate, spread the word. Susie was given the job of teaching with about forty children as well as adults at night. Soon after she was sent to Beaufort, South Carolina, where she was enrolled as a laundress for the first enlisted Black soldiers.

If she had proved herself as a teacher, her devotion and service to the 33rd United States Colored Infantry for three long years of the war was heroic. Administering as a nurse to the wounded and dying, she was always modest about her role. She survived numerous skirmishes and shipwrecks, and she delighted at learning to fieldstrip, clean and fire a musket!

Married before the war was over, her husband died in 1866, leaving her pregnant with a son and alone.  Always resourceful, she returned to Savannah to teach until free schools opened, and she was obliged to work as a laundress. Emigrating to Boston, she experienced firsthand the wages of Reconstruction. Later she would regret how little the younger generation understood about the sacrifices made during the war and the vast differences in treatment of Black citizens between the North and South.

Suzie died in October of 1912. She is buried in Massachusetts next to her first husband, Edward King.

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Some interesting facts...

• Before the end of the Civil War, every Black person in Savannah needed a pass to be on the street, otherwise any person of color would be arrested after nine o’clock at night.
• Nearly 200,000 (178,975) Black soldiers served during the Civil War.
• Susie met Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross, in Beaufort, South Carolina, where they administered to the sick and wounded.
• Scores of Black women raised funds and commissioned the creation of the regimental flag for the Sixth United States Colored Infantry (USCI). They carried the flag into battle against the Confederate Army to liberate enslaved people.
• Susie dedicated much of her postwar life to helping veterans and their families.
• She joined the Women’s Relief Corps (W.R.C.), Auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic and organized Corps 67.​​​​
• A widow, she moved to Boston in 1872 where she married her second husband, Russell Taylor, in 1879.
  

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“Justice we ask - to be citizens of the 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.” ~ Susie King Taylor

Click on book cover to learn more.

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