City of Savannah, GA
10/17/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 10/17/2024 09:01
City to Dedicate Taylor Square Ground Marker
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 17, 2024
CONTACT:
Office of Communications
City to Dedicate Taylor Square Ground Marker
SAVANNAH - The City of Savannah invites the community to join officials and staff on Oct. 21 as they dedicate a new ground marker in Taylor Square.
City Council approved the installation of a granite marker in Taylor Square in the first meeting of 2024 to note the history of the square. In February, the City celebrated the naming of Taylor Square with a day of community events.
The new granite marker will be placed in a landscaped bed and will read, "Taylor Square. Laid out 1851. 1851 Named for John C. Calhoun, 7th U.S. Vice President. 2022 City Council removed the name Calhoun, a staunch defender of slavery. 2023 named in honor of Susie King Taylor, a formerly enslaved woman, nurse, educator, and the first African American to openly teach in the State of Georgia. Erected by the City of Savannah 2024."
What:Taylor Square Ground Marker Dedication
When:Monday, Oct. 21, 10 a.m.
Where:Taylor Square
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About Susie King Taylor
Susie Baker King Taylor (August 6, 1848 - October 6, 1912) achieved many firsts in a lifetime spent overcoming adversity and helping elevate others out of slavery. Born into slavery in Liberty County, Ga., she moved to Savannah at age seven to live with her grandmother. Though illegal, she attended two secret schools taught by Black women. In April 1862, she fled to Union occupied St. Simons Island, where she established a school and became the first Black teacher openly teaching African Americans in Georgia. Her students included 40 children and "a number of adults who came to me nights, all of them so eager to learn to read, to read above anything else." Married in 1862 to Edward King, a Black Union officer, she moved with his regiment for the duration of the Civil War, serving as a nurse, laundress, and teacher. Postwar, she opened a private school for freedmen's children in Savannah. Widowed and working as a domestic servant by the 1870s, she moved to Boston, Mass., where she married Russell Taylor. There she became heavily involved with the Women's Relief Corps, a national organization for female Civil War veterans. As the author of Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers (1902), she was the only African American woman to publish a memoir of her wartime experiences.