In the 1850s, teaching enslaved people in Georgia was punishable by severe penalties. Nevertheless, seven-year-old Susie Baker would sneak through the streets of Savannah each day with her books wrapped in paper, hiding her true activities from the police.
Secret Lessons
Grandmother Dolly Reed took young Susie away from the Valentine Grest plantation and brought her to her home in Savannah. The decision seemed straightforward, but its consequences were revolutionary. Reed sent her granddaughter to a clandestine school run by Mrs. Woodhouse, a free woman of color, who accepted students one at a time to avoid suspicion.
The children entered the building one by one, holding their textbooks so they looked like ordinary packages. The system lasted for two years until Susie came under the wing of Mathilda Beasley, who would later become the first Black nun in Savannah.
When this arrangement ended, a white neighbor’s child, Katie O’Connor, secretly tutored Susie for four months. Her final teacher was the son of her grandmother’s white landlord. Ironically, he had to stop the lessons when he was drafted into the Confederate army.
What did the seven-year-old do with the knowledge she had gained? She began forging city passes for Black residents of Savannah. After 9 p.m., any African American caught on the street without documentation was sent to jail. As a teenager, Susie Baker wrote passes that protected people from arrest. From a plantation child, she became a local document forger for a just cause.
Nurse, Teacher, and Sharpshooter
In April 1862, Susie escaped with her uncle onto a federal gunboat stationed near Confederate Fort Pulaski. She was fourteen years old. She arrived at St. Simons Island, where the Union was sheltering escapees from slavery. She immediately began to teach. She became the first Black woman to openly provide education to African Americans in Georgia—no longer in secret, with books wrapped in paper, but openly and officially.
That same year, she married Edward King, a Black officer in the 33rd United States Colored Infantry. She joined the regiment as a nurse and laundress, but her duties went far beyond the official description. After hours, she taught soldiers to read and write. Along the way, as she later recalled, she learned to handle a musket and became a pretty good shot.
For four years and three months, she served in the Union army without receiving a single dollar in wages. She worked in a hospital for Black soldiers in Beaumont, South Carolina, where she met Clara Barton, the future founder of the American Red Cross. Together, the two women tended the wounds of a war that would decide the fate of millions.
Memoirs No One Wanted to Publish
After the war, Susie and Edward returned to Savannah. She opened a school for Black children, but Edward died a few months before their son was born. Left alone with her child and her struggling school, she lost students year after year to the newly opened public schools. For years, she barely made ends meet.
In 1902, she published her memoirs, titled 'Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops.’ She had to self-publish because no publisher was interested. She became the first, and for a long time the only, African American woman to publish an account of her Civil War experiences—the first Black woman to self-publish her memoirs in the United States.
What stands out in her book? Susie King Taylor did not write as a victim, but as a witness and participant in history. She acknowledged that racism survived the war and subsequent decades, but concluded with words of hope. 'We demand justice,’ she wrote, 'the status of being citizens of the United States, where so many of our people have shed blood alongside white comrades.’
The woman who forged passes as a child and taught soldiers as a teenager bore witness at age fifty-four, leaving a legacy that has persisted for over a century.
Why Has History Forgotten Her?
Susie King Taylor died in 1912. Her memoirs collected dust in library archives for decades. Clara Barton became an icon, while Susie remained a footnote—the nurse who worked for free, the teacher who taught illegally and then officially, the author who had to finance her own book.
Perhaps the problem was that her story fit no tidy category. She was neither a defenseless victim nor a romantic heroine. She was a pragmatist, doing what was necessary—falsifying documents when needed, learning to shoot because it might come in handy, writing memoirs because someone had to.
Marcus Renfell
Marcus Renfell is a historian driven by curiosity and passion. He refuses to accept the “safe,” polished versions of the past. Instead, he brings forgotten, overlooked, and distorted stories back to life. His work blends scholarly precision with the art of storytelling, turning historical narratives into vivid, page-turning experiences.
His mission is simple: to prove that history can be gripping, alive, and deeply personal.
His debut book: Women of Science. Stories You Were Never Told
In his first publication, Marcus Renfell shines a light on the remarkable women who shaped the world of science — both the pioneers whose names we know and the brilliant minds history forgot. It’s an inspiring journey through untold stories, groundbreaking achievements, and the resilience of women who changed our understanding of the world.
? Discover Women of Science. Stories You Were Never Toldon Amazon.com.