Glendale Community College
Home MenuSusan King Taylor
Observation by Hoover Zariani, Manager, Center for Student Involvement
(February 2016)
I happen to find a short biography of Susan King Taylor by accident, when I was searching for the contributions of African American females during the Civil War many years ago as an undergraduate student. Searching online, it was difficult to find much about her life but I persisted and was able to use her as an example of African American female role model. Ironically, if you search Wikipedia (the most common search tool) today, you will still not find a page for her.
Susan King Taylor was born into slavery in Georgia in 1848. In her lifetime, she contributed a great deal to African American and United States history. In her lifetimes, she accomplished many firsts in the African American community.
As a child, she attended secret schools for black children and learned to read and write at a very young age. During the civil war, at the age of 14, she became the first African American nurse to tend to black Union soldiers. After moving back and forth between her family residing in Georgia and elsewhere, she met her first husband, who was in the Army and, at the time, stationed in South Carolina.
Upon moving back to Georgia with her husband, the Army learned about her stellar literacy skills and gave her some school supplies and asked her to teach young black children to read and write. With this, she started the first openly African American school for children and former slaves in Georgia. During the day, she would teach children. At night, she would teach adults to read and write.
She was also the first African American woman to serve as a nurse during the Civil War for African American soldiers. Her experiences during the war and her meticulous journal writing allowed her to be the first (and possibly only) African American woman to publish a memoir of the civil war in 1902, titled “My Life in Camp: An African American Woman’s Civil War Memoir.” Of course, she was never paid for her service as a nurse, which was true of the other African American nurses who came after her.
She was married twice (her first husband died) and had one child. It is unknown if she had any children by her second husband. She passed away in 1912 at the age of 64 in Boston, where she is interred.
I truly respect and admire Mrs. King Taylor for her compassion, her courage, and her perseverance in taking on things that were at the time extremely controversial, especially for a woman. The fact that she published her memoirs so that we can have an account of the Civil War through the eyes of an African American female is a historic achievement (and I believe the only book of that kind).
Sources: www.thegrio.com and www.blackartdepot.com
(February 2016)
Susan King Taylor was born into slavery in Georgia in 1848. In her lifetime, she contributed a great deal to African American and United States history. In her lifetimes, she accomplished many firsts in the African American community.
As a child, she attended secret schools for black children and learned to read and write at a very young age. During the civil war, at the age of 14, she became the first African American nurse to tend to black Union soldiers. After moving back and forth between her family residing in Georgia and elsewhere, she met her first husband, who was in the Army and, at the time, stationed in South Carolina.
Upon moving back to Georgia with her husband, the Army learned about her stellar literacy skills and gave her some school supplies and asked her to teach young black children to read and write. With this, she started the first openly African American school for children and former slaves in Georgia. During the day, she would teach children. At night, she would teach adults to read and write.
She was also the first African American woman to serve as a nurse during the Civil War for African American soldiers. Her experiences during the war and her meticulous journal writing allowed her to be the first (and possibly only) African American woman to publish a memoir of the civil war in 1902, titled “My Life in Camp: An African American Woman’s Civil War Memoir.” Of course, she was never paid for her service as a nurse, which was true of the other African American nurses who came after her.
She was married twice (her first husband died) and had one child. It is unknown if she had any children by her second husband. She passed away in 1912 at the age of 64 in Boston, where she is interred.
I truly respect and admire Mrs. King Taylor for her compassion, her courage, and her perseverance in taking on things that were at the time extremely controversial, especially for a woman. The fact that she published her memoirs so that we can have an account of the Civil War through the eyes of an African American female is a historic achievement (and I believe the only book of that kind).
Sources: www.thegrio.com and www.blackartdepot.com