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| Robert Smalls:
Civil War Hero Among the most celebrated Black heroes of the Civil War, Robert Smalls (1839-1915) had a political career that stretched into the twentieth century. Born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls worked on the Charleston docks before the Civil War. He was employed by the Confederacy as a pilot on the Planter, Smalls secretly guided the ship out of Charleston harbor in May 1862 and delivered it to federal forces. He was given a reward of $1,500 and made a second lieutenant in the Union Navy. In 1864, Smalls was evicted from a segregated Philadelphia streetcar: a mass protest followed that led to the integration of the city's public transportation. During Reconstruction, Smalls became a powerful political leader on the South Carolina Sea Islands. He represented Beaufort in the Constitutional convention of 1868, published a local newspaper and was elected to fie terms in Congress. In 1895, he was one of six Black delegates to the State Constitutional Convention, where he protested against the decision to deprive Blacks of the right to vote. Until 1913, he held the office as collector of customs at Beaufort. More great links: | |
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