Susie King Taylor

Susie King Taylor (1848 to 1912) was an American nurse, educator and memoirist, born into slavery in coastal Georgia and remembered as the first African-American nurse of the American Civil War. After her family reached Union lines in 1862 she was asked to open a school for the children on St. Simons Island, and she went on to teach in freedmen's schools in and near Savannah. She served with the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, later the 33rd United States Colored Troops, tending wounded and sick soldiers and teaching men to read and write, and in the war she met Clara Barton. Her 1902 memoir of camp life made her the first Black woman to self-publish her story. In later years she lived in Boston and helped organize a corps of the Woman's Relief Corps. This entry records her as a historical nurse and caregiver, not as a source of medical advice.