Susie King Taylor
First and only Black woman to publish memoir about her role as a Civil War nurse
Susie King Taylor was born as a slave in Georgia 1848. To become literate, she attended secret schools where she learned to read and write. In 1862 she escaped slavery during the Civil War by fleeing to Union-occupied territory. By age 14 she was teaching soldiers and other freed slaves to read and write. After marrying a Black officer, she worked as a nurse and laundress for his regiment and later worked as a nurse at a hospital for Black soldiers in South Carolina, where she met and worked with Clara Barton. Like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, she was not paid during her years of service by the Union military.
In 1866 she opened her own school to educate newly freed slaves, but as early public schools of that time hired white educators, she struggled financially, especially after her husband passed away. Serving as a domestic employee for a wealthy family, she moved to Boston in the 1870s and ultimately remarried. She became a member of the Women’s Relief Corps, an organization dedicated to the welfare of veterans and in 1893 she served as the president of her corps. In 1902 she published her memoir, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp. She remains the first and only Black woman to publish her life experiences during the Civil War, which includes documentation of her role as a nurse.
Sources
We sourced the above information from the the American Battlefield Trust, the NIH document on African Americans in Civil War Medicine, and the National Parks Service.
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