13th Amendment - Half of those freed were women

18thVirginia

Major
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Sep 8, 2012
It seems fitting on this day of commemoration of the 13th Amendment, that we look at some of the black women who had been enslaved and would become leaders in the fight to have black people make the transition from slave to free citizen.

Elizabeth Keckley started life as a slave and rose to become the seamstress for the First Lady of the United States.

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Born a slave in Virginia in 1818, Keckley would be able to buy her freedom and that of her son's in Missouri, where an owner's family had moved. She moved to Baltimore and then to Washington, D. C., where she became a seamstress to wealthy white ladies. Eventually, she would be introduced to Mary Todd Lincoln, would become her personal seamstress and confidant. In addition to her status as a businesswoman with a staff of sewers, Keckley would involve herself in raising money to help ex-slaves who became Union soldiers and to assist poor and displaced former slaves. She wrote an autobiography documenting her life from slave to business woman and philanthropist.

Susie King Taylor, born to enslaved parents in 1848, she would attend school while living with a grandmother in Savannah, even though that was forbidden for black children in Georgia. At age 14, she fled to Union lines in St. Simon's Island, where she was asked by the military to teach the newly freed children of the area. She organized a school and taught children by day and adults at night until forced to flee. After a marriage, she served as a nurse with her husband's regiment and continuing teaching USCT to read and write. After the war, she returned to Savannah and opened school. She also wrote a set of memoirs about her life,
Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers.

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Additional information on Susie King Taylor can be found here in the Ladies Tea at http://civilwartalk.com/threads/sus...-heroine-nations-midwife.118196/#post-1224988
 

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