Hermina Glass-Hill, the executive director of the Institute, is considered the foremost scholar on Susie King Taylor in the United States. She has researched Susie King Taylor's life since 2009 and she travels extensively lecturing about Taylor whom she calls "America's Unsung Heroine of Freedom." She even moved from her hometown in Atlanta, Georgia to Taylor's birthplace in Liberty County, Georgia.

 

She is currently using her decade long research to pen a never-before-published biography of Susie King Taylor. It is aptly titled "Justice Sweet Land of Liberty: The Life of Georgia Geechee Susie King Taylor." It is an odyssey chock-full of rare details about the former bondgirl-turned-Civil War heroine, vivid imagery, and historical references all based on contemporary primary sources. 

"I am compelled to anchor Susie King Taylor in the diaspora of Africa and Geechee culture in the United States..."Justice" is a recurrent plea that continues to resonate throughout the land. From the first day that an African set foot on these soils he, she, they were seekers of Freedom and Justice," says Glass-Hill.

In her 1902 memoir, "Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops", Susie King Taylor (b. August 6, 1848-d. October 6, 1912) wrote about justice and rampant sectional impunities based on race around the turn of the century, particularly in the Southland. She wrote, "...In this "land of the free" we are burned, tortured, and denied a fair trial, murdered for any imaginary wrong conceived in the brain of the negro-hating white man. There is no redress for us from a government which promised to protect all under its flag. It seems a mystery to me. They say, "One flag, one nation, one country indivisible." Is this true? Can we say this truthfully, when one race is allowed to burn, hang, and inflict the most horrible torture weekly, monthly, on another? No, we cannot sing "My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of Liberty"! It is hollow mockery. The Southland laws are all on the side of the white, and they do just as they like to the negro, whether in the right or not." 

Glass-Hill states, "Therein are dire implications that resonate across time, space, and geography since the Jim and Jane Crow Era until the present." 

This book will offer readers an opportunity to be transported back in time and to travel forward with Susie King Taylor across the landscapes of captivity and the sea of freedom as this heroine experiences joy, heartbreak, disappointment, rage, courage, and true liberty.