SAVANNAH – One of Savannah’s historic squares now bears the name of a Liberty County native.

Savannah City Council unanimously approved renaming the former Calhoun Square for Susie King Taylor, who was born into slavery on a Liberty County plantation.

“It is one thing to make history. It is another to make sense,” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said at Thursday evening’s council meeting. “Here, we are doing both.”

Taylor moved to Savannah at 7 years old to live with her grandmother, who was freed. But neither freed or enslaved Blacks were permitted to be literate in Georgia at that time. Taylor’s grandmother Dolly encouraged to attend secret schools where she learned to read and write.

Eventually, Taylor taught the children and the adults in the camp of the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops Regiment to read and write and served as the first African-American nurse in the Civil War.

Following the war, Taylor started schools for Black children in Savannah.

Council members voted last November to remove John C. Calhoun’s name from the square. A one-time U.S. vice president and U.S. senator from South Carolina, Calhoun was a staunch defender of slavery.

The renaming of the square for Taylor is the first to be done in 140 years. It also marks the first square in Savannah to be named for a woman and for an African-American.

For more, see the August 31 issue of the Courier.