Robert Smalls, photo from the Library of Congress

Robert Smalls was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1839. At the start of the Civil War, Smalls was an enslaved crewmember on a Confederate transport ship operating in the Charleston harbor. In May 1862, he and other crewmembers sailed away with the Planter when the white officers went ashore for the night.

Smalls, 23, piloted the ship to a rendezvous point where they picked up family members, then sailed past five forts, dressing up as the ship’s captain and providing the correct signals to make it beyond Confederate lines. Then the no-longer-enslaved crewmembers surrendered the Planter, which was loaded with weapons and ammunition, to the U.S. Navy.

Smalls also gave the U.S. valuable information about Confederate operations around Charleston. He went on to serve as a pilot on a number of naval vessels, eventually being promoted to captain of the Planter.

After the war, Smalls returned to Beaufort and bought the plantation where he had been born as a slave then helped develop the region into a thriving Black community. In 1868, Smalls was elected as the first Black member of the South Carolina House of Representatives; he went on to serve in the state Senate and then to five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Smalls lived to see many rights established — and then erased — for Black people in the South, but his story has been rediscovered in recent decades. His home has been declared a national landmark, and the state of South Carolina recently approved placing a monument to Smalls on the statehouse grounds, the first to honor an individual African American there.

The base of the statue will include facts about Smalls’s remarkable life and this quote from 1895: “My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.”

Watch Rep. Jim Clyburn tell the story of Robert Smalls to Stephen Colbert for a fascinating look at this inspiring man! The story starts at about 4 minutes into the clip.