More than 100 years after his death, Robert Smalls — a Civil War hero, an education advocate and South Carolina politician — will be honored with a statue on the Statehouse grounds.
It comes a decade after the Confederate battle flag was removed from the complex.
The sculpture will be the first individual statue to honor an African American on the Capitol grounds that currently only includes statues of white men, most with ties to either the Civil War or its legacy of the Jim Crow South. (The complex does include the African American history monument.)
State Rep. Brandon Cox wanted to change that history.
"It's, it's just awesome," an emotional Cox told reporters in May at the Statehouse, when, after months and months of meetings, a Statehouse committee gave its final approval to the statue's design and location. "It's powerful."
Cox, a white Berkeley County Republican lawmaker, worked with House Rep. Jermaine Johnson, a Black Richland County Democrat, to finally get the statue off the ground after unsuccessful attempts in year's past that included lobbying by Smalls's great-great-grandson, Michael B. Moore.
They selected an artist, Basil Watson, and they picked a prime location close to the Capitol’s visitors’ entrance.
It’s a big deal, Johnson said.
He said it might not resonate with the public until the statue goes up, a timeline that hinges on fundraising.
"It’s just a fantastic thing for young Black kids, and kids in general, to be able to come here and see that all men were created equal like our Constitution indicates," Johnson said.
Few historical stories match the span of Smalls’s life.
That’s how Bernard Powers put it. Powers is a professor emeritus at the College of Charleston and founding director of the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston.
"You can tell the whole story of Robert Smalls with no fear of being embarrassed by it," he said.
That story begins in 1839, when Smalls was born into slavery on the coast in Beaufort.
In his early 20s, Smalls and other enslaved crew members commandeered a Confederate warship, the Planter. Smalls, wearing a captain’s hat and using Confederate hand signals, delivered the ship to the Union Navy and his crew to their freedom.
"And of course, the captain got on board, and my goodness he could not have been more surprised to find this ship captained and crewed by an all-slave crew," Powers said.
"And Robert Smalls says to him something like, ‘Sir, I think that Uncle Abe Lincoln will find use of some of these cannons that we have on board.'”
Smalls’s story doesn’t end there.
He bought the house owned by his enslaver.
He fought for the rights of African Americans and public education.
He helped write the Reconstruction-era state constitution in 1868.
And he served in the halls of the South Carolina Statehouse and Congress.
"It’s incredible. His story really does seem like an urban legend," said Tonya Matthews, president and CEO of the International African American Museum in Charleston. "I think that extraordinary times create extraordinary people."
Matthews said the unreal story is a story of South Carolina.
"We have stories that have shown again and again and again that we can move, we can change, we can grow. Sometimes it's more painful than others, but it does happen here," Matthews said. "And so, I think that we can be a model of inspiration for ourselves as well as for the nation as a whole."
State Rep. Cox can trace his family’s South Carolina roots all the way to the 1700s.
Cox acknowledges he didn’t know who Smalls was until not long before first running for office.
He said it’s become one of the most important actions he’s taken as a lawmaker.
"We made some history," he said. "That’s emotional for me."
It’s a story, Cox said, that can make any South Carolinian proud.
For more information about the Robert Smalls statue and how to donate, go to admin.sc.gov/robertsmalls.
