Slideshow: Celebrating Susie King Taylor’s freedom

Just across Jones Creek from where 13-year-old Susie Baker King Taylor, her uncle, and seven relatives launched a rowboat and navigated all the way to a Union gunboat off St. Catherine’s Island in 1862, dignitaries from the Gullah-Geechee community, graduate students from West Africa, and local residents joined to pay homage to Liberty County’s own daughter on April 13. 

The event took place at Jones Creek Community Park, near the former Grest plantation on Isle of Wight, which is now part of Midway. I-95 rises over the creek and is visible from Johns Creek Park, yet few who travel that highway know they are driving over Taylor’s watery course to freedom.

Hermina Glass-Hill, director of the Susie King Taylor Women’s Institute and Ecology Center and curator of the Susie King Taylor Museum in Hinesville, as well as president of the Liberty County Historical Society, welcomed the crowd, recalling Taylor’s contributions. Joining her were LCHS Vice President Randy Branch and Treasurer Phil Odom. Filmmaker Kadeem Brown served as master of ceremonies in between shooting video of the event.

Taylor, who escaped enslavement, had been allowed to stay with her grandmother in Savannah from the age of 7. She attended underground schools for African American children and also was tutored by two white children.

After escaping Isle of Wight with her uncle and others who joined the Union Army, she became a nurse for the 1st South Carolina Colored Troops, following the soldiers into battle and using her knowledge of medicinal herbs to treat their wounds.

She taught reading and writing to about 40 children and some adults on St. Simon’s Island from April to August 1864 at the request of Union Commodore John R. Goldsborough. 

Taylor continued to teach and organize military nurses during Reconstruction, and wrote a valuable memoir of her early life in Liberty County and Savannah and of her unique service during the war called Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers. When Glass-Hill found that slender volume, she had to know more, and she moved to Liberty County to delve into Taylor’s life. Her scholarship led to the Susie King Taylor Museum, as well as local historical markers and programming.

That love for Taylor’s story is spreading. U.S. Army Sergeant First Class (ret.) Andrea Martin, who led the Pledge of Allegiance, said, “It is my honor today to be here to honor Susie King Taylor’s escape to freedom because she was a soldier. And so, her life resonates with my life.”

Rose Mullice read excerpts from Taylor’s memoir: “On April 1, 1862, about the time the Union soldiers were firing on Fort Pulaski, I was sent out into the country to my mother. I remember what a roar and din the guns made. They jarred the earth for miles. The fort was at last taken by them on April 11, 1862. Two days after the taking of Fort Pulaski, my uncle took his family of seven and myself to St. Catherine Island. We landed under the protection of the Union fleet, and remained there two weeks, when about thirty of us were taken aboard the gunboat P–, to be transferred to St. Simon’s Island.”

Throughout the ceremony, Temakha Maakheru played the djembe, a West African drum, and drew ethereal tones from large, pastel-colored singing bowls. Geechee rapper Quintin “Q” Smalls showcased the joys of contemporary Geechee life. Soprano Sandra Hicks-Sheffield entertained the all-ages crowd with a medley of traditional freedom songs, then led everyone in “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.”. 

Roz Frasier read a commendation of Taylor’s life from Gov. Brian Kemp on behalf of State Rep. Al Williams, and Mayor Pro Tem Clemontine Washington read a proclamation from the City of Midway on behalf of Mayor Levern Clancy, Jr. 

Darien Mayor Pro Tempore Griffin Lotson, a seventh-generation Gullah-Geechee descendant and Williams’ first campaign manager, also spoke, praising Glass-Hill for her pioneering work in recovering Taylor as a historic figure.

“Listen, I’ve been working with her for a number of years over a decade, so this is not just a show what you see here,” Lotson told the crowd. “These are boots that are on the ground that’s been working diligently.”

He added that the National Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Commission has “the same distinction of Niagara Falls. Most people know about Niagara Falls, about a billion people all over the world. We have the same designation. And Hermina has been working with that organization again, as I know, for over 10 years. I remember when she gave our heart, mind and soul and body to bring this to life….The federal government is certainly going to know more about this, because we’re personally going to notify them of this great occasion that not going to happen, but is happening now.”

Glass-Hill poured libations for ancestors whose names audience members called out according to West African tradition. Participants each took a piece of bread to “cast upon the waters” as a symbol of the good to come.

In parting, Glass-Hill told the crowd, “On behalf of the memory of our native daughter, our Geechee heroine of freedom, who is from this county of Liberty, who is from this city of Midway, this community of Isle of Wight on which you stand: may you all strive for freedom and peace and democracy and love and compassion toward everybody. 

“Because Susie King Taylor had a philosophy and her philosophy was this,” she continued.”Number one, freedom belongs to everybody; it’s a God- given right. Number two, everybody should be free. Number three, she believed in interracial coalition building. Interracial coalition building. We can’t do anything by ourselves, black, white, or in between. She believed in that, she lived by that, because we’re all humans. And four, she believed in education. Make education your key to life because with it, you can go far.”