E s c a p e to F r e e d o m
The Life and Legacy of Georgia Geechee Susie King Taylor
A website created by the Susie King Taylor Women's Institute & Ecology Center for research and exhibition purposes.
Coastal Black Women's Ocean Memory and Conservation Collective
The Susie King Taylor Women's Institute and Ecology Center is honored to collaborate with a collective of Black women eco-activists who are taking interest in, responsibility for and care of the beaches, waterways, and whales of their environment in the Georgia Sea Islands while honoring the ancestors of the region. In December 2020 the group co-created and co-sponsored The Coastal Black Women's Ocean Memory and Conservation Jamboree to align with and participate in Whale Week efforts to bring awareness to the endangered whales who migrate to the southeast coast to calve each winter. Future efforts are planned.
Who We Are...
Bridget Battle
Bridget Battle is a librarian and a globetrotter. A native Savannahian with family roots in Louisiana and Martha’s Vineyard, the water has always played a prominent role in her family’s history. Having traveled the world, including living in Kazakhstan and Abu Dhabi, she has seen first-hand the impact the ocean has on many cultures and is honored to be a part of The Coastal Black Women's Ocean Memory and Conservation Jamboree.
Karima Bilal
Karima Bilal is an early childhood educator in Savannah who uses a holistic approach incorporating Expressive Art practices and Positive Behavioral Intervention Supports to promote social-emotional learning. She brings this holistic approach to her environmental activism.
Hermina Glass-Hill
Hermina Glass-Hill is the Executive Director and founder of the Susie King Taylor Women’s Institute and Ecology Center, located in former enslaved woman and Civil War nurse Susie King Taylor’s hometown of Midway, Georgia. She is an environmental advocate affiliated with Georgia Interfaith Power and Light and Savannah Presbytery’s M.K. Pentecost Ecology Fund.
Tasha Wei
Tasha Wei is a food justice activist with Farm Truck 912 in Savannah, a doula, a plant forager, and the Outreach and Education Coordinator Forsyth Farmers Market in Savannah. She is a graduate of Harvard University with a background in Anthropology and Public Health.
Hermina Glass-Hill believes: "The holistic principles of deep ecology pull us (healers, storytellers, singers, teachers, midwives, deep sea divers, citizen scientists, and racial and food justice activists) to honor our ancestors and the Ma'afa, and to do our part in caring for and sustaining the Earth, ourselves, and all living things including the North Atlantic right whales. And, climate change crises and rising sea levels require that we work together, not on silos.
"Testify...Black women including our foremothers have always been ecologically and environmentally conscious in traditional, esoteric ways. From Africa through the Ma'afa/Middle Passage and centuries of Enslavement they were/are Earth keepers, Water savers, aura/air purifiers, temperature gaugers, life givers, life sustainers, and healers of one another, our communities, and the entire planet. The difference is spirituality, rituals, memory, freedom, and equity."