Susie Ann Baker King Taylor: Radical Educator

Born: August 6, 1848

Died: October 6, 1912

Country: United States

Culture or Era: American Civil War

Susie is the only African-American woman to write a memoir of her life during the Civil War. Her book, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops, tells her remarkable story of bravery, determination, and the compassionate care that she had for people around her, even in impossible circumstances.

Susie was born as Susan Ann Baker to an enslaved family on a plantation in Georgia. Susie lived on the plantation until she was seven, when her Grandma Dolly was granted permission to take little Susie to live with her in Savannah, the biggest city in Georgia. When she moved to Savannah, Susie’s grandmother sent her to be educated. But there was a catch -- it was illegal for enslaved children to go to school.

So instead, Susie was taught secretly by one of her grandmother’s friends, a Mrs. Woodhouse who was a former slave and a nun Mrs. Beasley. Susie would gather her things in the morning and walk to the apartment where Mrs. Woodhouse and Mrs. Beasley would teach, along with a few other children. These types of secret schools were called “bucket schools” because the children had to hide their textbooks in buckets so they would not draw attention from the police. Susie was an energetic learner, but by the time she was twelve Susie’s teachers told her that they had taught her everything they knew.

Susie had made friends with a local white girl named Kate. Susie told Kate about her difficulties with school, and asked Kate to teach her what else she knew. Kate agreed and would visit Susie after school every day to share what she learned in class. When Kate entered a convent and couldn’t teach her anymore, Susie asked her landlord’s son, a white high schooler named James, for help. He would also come home from school and teach Susie what he had learned in class that day. No matter who was her teacher, Susie was a diligent student, asking lots of questions and focusing hard to make sure she understood everything she needed to know. But everything would change just before her twelfth birthday. That year, the Civil War started and James was called up to be a soldier. 

Susie’s education would become a superpower in her life. She could read and write, something hardly any African Americans were allowed to do. 

Because of the war, Susie was sent back to the plantation where she was born. But the war still found them, and when a battle between Confederate and Union forces broke out, Susie fled with her family to an island off the coast of Georgia, wanting to join up with some Union soldiers stationed there. The soldiers took them in and transferred them to a safer location on a different island called St. Simon’s Island. While on the boat to the other island, the boat’s commander, a man named Captain Whitmore, asked Susie where she was from, and if she could read or write. She said she was from Savannah, and nervously admitted that she could do both. The captain then asked her to create a school for the children on the island. Relieved, she agreed, on the condition that the school be given some books to use.

Shortly after arriving on the island, Susie started establishing her school. The Union sent books and supplies as promised, and just fourteen years old Susie founded the first-ever free African American school for children. She also became the first female African American to openly teach African Americans in Georgia. Susie operated this school by herself for more than a year. During the day, Susie taught about forty children, and at night she would teach classes for adults who wanted to learn but worked during the day. 

After a year of teaching, Susie moved to join the first black regiment in the US Army, called the First South Carolina Volunteers. She officially joined the regiment as a laundress, but she actually didn’t do much laundry. Instead, her education proved to be her greatest asset, as she once again became a teacher. She helped educate the African American soldiers of the unit, who needed to be able to write reports and read letters with commands from the army. Susie was an inspiring teacher, and the commander of the regiment noticed, saying of his soldiers that “Their love of the spelling-book is perfectly inexhaustible.” 

On January 1st, 1863, the regiment gathered together in celebration: they gathered to read the Emancipation Proclamation, a document from the US Government that proclaimed enslaved people to be free in most of the US south. Susie’s memoir: “It was a glorious day for us all.” During her time with the regiment, in addition to teaching Susie also learned to be a nurse. She was not squeamish, and said “it is strange how our aversion to suffering is overcome by war…” She also learned how to handle musket guns, and would often clean the guns and then test them by aiming at targets (and often hitting them). 

While working with the regiment, Susie met and fell in love with another young soldier, a sergeant named Edward King, and married him. Together, they stayed with the regiment for four years, until the war ended in 1866. Susie, now eighteen, moved with her husband back to Savannah to do what else? She opened a private school for African American children, now free.

Cart-de-visite of a Freedmen's School in New Bern, North Carolina

Freedmen's school in Freedmen's School In Beaufort, South Carolina with students and teachers, late 1860s, Getty Images

Later in Life

Cover of Susie Ann Taylor's memoir, Clara Barton Museum

Unfortunately, Susie’s husband died soon after the end of the war. Susie was pregnant when he died, and overcome with grief she closed her school and moved up north to Boston. There she met and married a man named Russell Taylor, and devoted the rest of her life to the Women’s Relief Corps, a national organization dedicated to supporting female Civil War veterans. In 1902, when Susie was 54 years old, she published a memoir of her life, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops. She passed away ten years later and is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Boston. Her headstone did not have her name until October 2021, when the Boston mayor dedicated a new memorial headstone inscribed with her name and portrait. 

Gravestone of Susie Baker King Taylor, Mount Hope Cemetery, Boston

Legacy

In 2018, Susie was elected to the Georgia Women of Achievement Hall of Fame for her contributions to education and freedom. In 2023, Calhoun Square in Savannah, Georgia was renamed Taylor Square in Susie’s honor. An elementary school in Savannah is named after her, and an official state marker commemorates her life near her birthplace. In 2015, the Susie King Taylor Women’s Institute and Ecology Center was established in Midway, Georgia. 

“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.”

from Susie Ann Baker King Taylor's memoir

Historical marker in Midway, Georgia