Susie King Taylor Freedom Park opens in Midway

Dignitaries from across Georgia’s Gullah Geechee corridor, including Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, Darien Mayor Pro Tempore Griffin Lotson and Liberty County’s State Rep. Al Williams celebrated the opening of a park dedicated to Susie King Taylor in Midway on Monday.

Those attending the 164th anniversary of Taylor’s escape to freedom from the Gress Island plantation included a key official from the the National Park Service, giving Liberty County community leaders hope that their connection to the African American leader could bring more recognition and tourism dollars.

Susie King Taylor Freedom Park is one of multiple important yet lesser-known historic sites in Liberty County, along with the Midway Congregational Church and cemetery, Fort Morris, Geechee Kunda, the Baptismal Trail, Dorchester Academy and the Susie King Taylor Museum dedicated to the local African American Civil War heroine. Recognition by the National Park Service, however, could be a gamechanger.

“We want to be able to continue to connect with other organizations and entities, but elevate the story higher, since we do have this national connection,” historian and Susie King Taylor Museum founder Hermina Glass-Hill said. 

Park improvements are being funded by a combination of Special Local Option Sales Tax revenue, donations from Georgia Power, the Liberty County Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Liberty County Historical Society, as well as various grants.

SLIDESHOW: Susie King Taylor Freedom Park opens

What makes it important

Just a few yards from where the Midway Middle School Choir sang the National Anthem on Monday, 13-year-old Susie Baker, her uncle, and his family escaped enslavement  on April 13, 1862. They rowed down Jones Creek, the Laurel River, and the Medway River to land at Union-controlled St. Catherine’s Island. 

Young Susie had been educated in Savannah in the clandestine school for free people of color, and soon after escaping to freedom she enlisted with the U.S. Colored Troops as a washerwoman. Yet she worked as a battlefield nurse, using herbs and potions she had learned as a child. She married Sgt. Edward King that year. After the war, she taught other newly freed African Americans to read, write and do math. 

When her husband died in 1866, Taylor moved to Boston, where she married a second time and served in the Woman’s Relief Corps. She wrote the memoir Reminiscences of My Life in Camp With the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops Late 1st S.C. Volunteers. Taylor died in 1912 and is buried in Boston.

But Liberty County residents, including Glass-Hill, count her as a local hero. “To have that event on the site, where she lived on that island, as well as on the exact day of her escape, 164 years ago, I think the entire ceremony was very meaningful and impactful,” Glass-Hill said after the park commemoration. 

Glass-Hill is working with the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program to elevate the county’s historic role in the emancipation of Black Americans. A second federal program that Liberty could apply for is the Reconstruction Era National Historic Network. Both require rigorous application processes, according to Glass-Hill.

Laura Waller, who runs the Reconstruction Era National Park and National Historic Network for the National Park Service, came to the park celebration from Beaufort, S.C.. 

Waller said among the options her office is considering is cobranding signs for the Susie King Taylor sites in Liberty County, which could help visitors understand the importance of local landmarks like the creek where Taylor escaped slavery.

A tourism draw, a local greenspace

Glass-Hill said that the opportunity to educate more Americans about Susie Taylor King is immense. “I think that for Liberty County, this can be really, really huge if we’re strategic about how we market the park, the story, the museum, this place,” she said.

The first of three stages of park renovation has included paved roads, more parking and new lighting, as well as a walking trail and playground. 

In the next phases, a statue of Taylor holding a lantern aloft will be installed near the water’s edge in direct sight of I-95 where it crosses the Jerico River, as well as a 60-seat amphitheater between the creek and pavilion plus a fishing pier and dock. A nearly two-mile-long elevated boardwalk will wind through the maritime forest and marsh.

“It’s marching towards providing a better experience for the citizens of Liberty County,” Recreation Director Raymond Gross said. “When you talk about the significance of Susie King Taylor in regards to that, it’s unlike any other story that we have, you know, even though we have two signers of the Declaration of Independence [Lyman Hall and Button Gwinnett]. So when it comes to activities, it provides another opportunity for kids and parents and people to enjoy coastal Liberty County.”

Pulling it all together

Community leaders are joining forces on projects like the park and the recent documentary about Dorchester Academy and the school’s role in training leaders from across the South for the Civil Rights Movement. 

Rose Mullice, who serves on the Dorchester Improvement Association Board and conducts tours of that museum, met Waller at the Susie King Taylor Museum in Hinesville after the ribbon-cutting. Waller said she encouraged Mullice’s group to apply for the National Park Services Historic Network, and that NPS was very interested in Dorchester Academy’s inclusion.

For now, the celebration at the park helped educate even longtime residents and natives of Liberty County.

Rev. Henry Frasier, who was born in Liberty County in 1932, said he even though he knew many of Liberty County’s legendary male leaders, he had not heard of Taylor before: “I did not know, and I never heard them folk talking about this lady,” said the former Liberty County commissioner and former Walthourville mayor. 

Frasier said that on his 70th wedding anniversary on April 22, they will bring their family members to the park and tell them about Taylor.

“This lady has been a role model. And she was a role model for me, And I did not know it…I’m thinking ‘I’m doing some great things.’ But when I sat down today, and I listened to what the lady read about the history, and what this lady did, and how she did it, and all she went through to do what she did. I count myself with a blessing from the Lord, but I’m a long way from the mark in terms of what she went through,” Frasier said.

Liberty County Chairman Donald Lovette, Frasier’s cousin, said he had fallen in love with the landscape around the park when it was previously known as Jones Creek Park 

Lovette, who graduated from Bradwell High in 1973, did not learn about Taylor growing up. “I was an adult before I found out who she was. But this thing here, she’s the Liberty County hero. She needs to be known about.”

He added, “We want this to be a destination. Not a park. A destination.”

“I think that once all of these phases are totally complete, this is going to be a gold mine,” Glass-Hill said. “It’s going to be spectacular once all of these come together here in the Coastal Empire.”