MIDWAY — The life and legacy of Susie King Taylor was honored Sunday at the fabled Dorchester Academy.
In early November, the City of Savannah will bestow upon the former slave who taught others covertly how to read and write and tended to Black Union soldiers during the Civil War with one of its most prestigious honors — putting her name on one of its 22 squares.
Savannah City Council voted in late August to change the name of Calhoun Square, named for former South Carolina U.S. Sen. John Calhoun, a one-time U.S. vice president who was also a staunch defender of slavery, to honor Taylor. Taylor, born into slavery on a Liberty County plantation, will become the first female and the first Black person to be honored with having her name on a Savannah square.
“We were able to do two things in one fell swoop,” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said.
Johnson told the attendees that their work to have Taylor’s life and work celebrated made a difference.
“Because of you, because you kept saying her name, because you would not let her die and you kept calling her name and you raised it to a point we could not ignore the beautiful life from right here in Liberty County,” he said.
Johnson also called on the Liberty County community to take part in the official square renaming.
“Show folks that her life mattered,” he said. “It is not for us. It is for little boys and girls who are growing up. We live in a community that is increasingly connected. The best history of Liberty County is still being written.”
The event Sunday at Dorchester was a fundraiser for the facility, which served as a school for Blacks for generations and was a focal point in the civil rights movement. The Liberty County MLK Association and the Liberty County Historical Society donated more than $10,000 to the Dorchester Improvement Association to conclude the festivities.
“It is indeed a momentous occasion when we gather to celebrate two reconstruction icons that are landmarks today,” said historian Hermina Glass-Hill, executive director of the Susie King Taylor Women’s Institute and Ecology Center.
Glass-Hill pointed out Taylor and Dorchester’s significance reached far beyond Liberty County’s lines. With its Citizenship Education Program that taught attendees how to teach those in their communities to fight effectively for civil rights, “Dorchester Academy was the center, the heartbeat, of the civil rights movement,” she said. “So this iconic institution has been and still is the center of Black, Colored, African- American and Gullah Geechee vision, inspiration and national and international social transformation. It happened here. It started here.”
Born on an Isle of Wight plantation in 1848, Susie Baker King Taylor was taken to Savannah in 1855 by her grandmother and taught to read and write in secret schools.
“She was not given her freedom,” Glass-Hill said. “She took her freedom. You cannot be a slave and not think about freedom. Don’t buy into the myth that Black folks were satisfied being happy slaves — they were not.”
Taylor first married Sgt. Edward King of Darien, a member of the first all-Black regiment in U.S. history. She also served as a nurse with the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, and many men from Liberty County, Glass-Hill said her research showed, were part of the South Carolina Volunteers.
After the war, she started schools for Blacks across the Coastal Empire, including one on land once owned by Lyman Hall.
Taylor is also the only Black woman known to have her memoir, about serving with the U.S. 33rd Colored Troops Regiment, from the Civil War published.
In 1874, she moved to Boston but also returned to the land where Midway First Presbyterian Church is located. She married Russell Taylor in 1879, and in 1902, she published her memoir, “Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops.” She spent the last years of her life serving aging veterans and the poor, Glass-Hill said, before her death in 1912.
A historic marker was erected in the First Presbyterian Church cemetery, alongside Highway 17, in 2019.
“All of this celebration started here, in Midway, seven years ago,” Glass-Hill said. “Today, as our old folks would say, bottom rail on top.”
Liberty County Commissioner Marion Stevens, whose district encompasses Dorchester Academy, said the county will present a check to the Dorchester Improvement Association next month to help them finish installing the HVAC system at Dorchester Academy. The funds, proceeds from the special purpose local option sales tax, were set aside for capital projects to help historic and cultural facilities in the county.
Glass-Hill also called upon attendees to continue to support the Dorchester Improvement Association.
“Tonight is not just about looking pretty — tonight is about investing in what you love and what you believe in,” she said.
