Author: Susie Taylor

Publisher:

Published: 2018-11-24

Total Pages: 60

ISBN-13: 9781729832769

Susie King Taylor was the only African-American woman to publish a memoir of her Civil War wartime experiences. Negro narratives of the Civil War are few. Susie King Taylor's 1902 slender volume, "Reminiscences of My Life in Camp," written with an earnest simplicity, records in camp the experience of a woman born a slave who was for four years a regimental laundress and nurse in the Thirty-third United States Colored Infantry, earlier First South Carolina Colored Troop. In April 1862, Susie Baker and many other African Americans fled to St. Simons Island, occupied at the time by Union forces. While at the school on St. Simons Island, Baker married Edward King, a black noncommissioned officer in the First South Carolina Volunteers of African Descent (later reflagged as 33rd United States Colored Troops). For three years she moved with her husband's and brothers' regiment, serving as nurse and laundress, and teaching many of the black soldiers to read and write during their off-duty hours. As Taylor notes, "There are many people who do not know what some of the colored women did during the war. There were hundreds of them who assisted the Union soldiers by hiding them and helping them to escape. Many were punished for taking food to the prison stockades for the prisoners." In describing Confederates' treacherous use of blackface, Taylor writes: "When the rebels saw these boats, they ran out of the city. The regiment landed and marched up the street, where they spied the rebels who had fled from the city. They were hiding behind a house about a mile or so away, their faces blackened to disguise themselves as negroes, and our boys, as they advanced toward them, halted a second, saying, 'They are black men! Let them come to us.'" About the author: "Susie King Taylor (1848 -1912) was the first Black Army nurse. She tended to an all Black army troop named the 1st South Carolina Volunteers (Union), later redesignated the 33rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment, where her husband served, for four years during the Civil War. Despite her service, like many African-American nurses, she was never paid for her work. As the author 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. She was also the first African American to teach openly in a school for former slaves in Georgia. At this school in Savannah, Georgia, she taught children during the day and adults at night. She is in the 2018 class of inductees of the Georgia Women of Achievement.