COLUMBIA, S.C. — A group studying where to place South Carolina’s first Statehouse monument to an individual African American has decided that the statue of Robert Smalls should stare down a notorious white supremacist who commanded most of the work of former slaves after the Civil War.
Smalls’ statue would line the sidewalk where thousands of children on field trips walk from the buses to the Statehouse every spring. Supporters hope this will stimulate conversations about a man who lived a heroically full life.
Smalls was born into slavery and stole a Confederate ship during the Civil War to sail his family and a dozen others to freedom. He spent a decade in the U.S. House of Representatives, helped rewrite the South Carolina Constitution to allow equality for black men after the Civil War, and then waged a courageous but doomed battle when racists returned to power and almost wiping out all the gains Smalls fought for.
The proposal unanimously approved Wednesday by the Robert Smalls Monument Commission now heads to the General Assembly, while another group works to raise the millions of dollars needed for Smalls to join the more than two dozen statues and memorials – many of which are for Confederates and other racists – standing there. the place where a main building has stood for more than 230 years.
After the vote, the sponsor of the bill creating the commission, white Republican Rep. Brandon Cox, and one of its first and most ardent backers, black Democratic Rep. Jermaine Johnson, walked to the proposed site for the statue. They spoke to reporters for a few minutes and then suddenly became overcome with emotion and hugged each other tightly.
“We’re sitting here making history together as black, white, tall, short, Republican, Democrat — it’s amazing,” Johnson said.
“This is South Carolina right here,” Cox said.
Robert Smalls was born in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina, and died in his hometown in 1915 as a free but somewhat forgotten man cast aside by a Southern society determined to keep blacks inferior.
But Smalls’ story was too daring and amazing to fade away.
In May 1862, during the Civil War, the ship’s pilot waited with nerves of steel for the ship’s white Confederate crew members to leave the ship for a night out. Smalls then donned a Confederate uniform, with the hat low over his dark forehead. He imitated hand signals and whistles to get through Confederate checkpoints in the pale moonlight before surrendering the ship to nearby Union soldiers after securing the freedom of his family and that of the other enslaved people on board.
Smalls helped the Union for the remainder of the Civil War. After the South lost, Smalls served in the South Carolina House and Senate before being elected to the U.S. House. He bought his master house in Beaufort, in part with money made by turning the Confederate ship over to Union forces, and then allowed the man’s penniless wife to live there when she was a widow.
Smalls would see a new South Carolina constitution nullify African Americans’ voting rights in 1895 in a convention led by “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman.
Tillman was a governor and U.S. senator who bragged about leading groups of white people who murdered black men who tried to vote in the 1876 election, leading to the end of Reconstruction, the return of all-white rule, and the collapse of everything . for which Smalls had worked.
Smalls’ statue, if approved, will face Tillman and stare at him from about a football field away.
Some civil rights groups have called for taking down statues of Confederates and white supremacists like Tillman, but state law requires legislative approval to remove them or even add language to the monuments describing their racist actions, an impossible task has been in a state dominated by conservative Republicans.
Sculptor Basil Watson’s proposal sees Smalls dressed in a tuxedo as a congressman at the height of his power. An idea was chosen that included multiple versions of Smalls as a riverboat captain and legislator.
A statue of one person at the height of power matches the motif of other Statehouse statues honoring men, including segregationist U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, Confederate general and former governor Wade Hampton and President George Washington, who also served in the Smalls’ line of sight will be his statue, said Mike Shealy, the chairman of the Robert Smalls Monument Commission.
“The simplicity of the statue of one man on a pedestal equal to the other people memorialized on our Statehouse grounds is the best representation,” Shealy said.
With a draft, officials can also start raising money. Cox and Johnson think it will cost millions to get it right. The more money raised, the larger the statue and the more intricate the design.
“Heck, I’d put up a 24-karat gold statue if we could raise $100 million,” Johnson said.
On one side of the statue’s base are facts about Smalls’ life. Another will feature a quote from Smalls from 1895 when Tillman and other whites took over the state constitutional convention and tried to put Smalls and other African Americans back in their place.
“My race needs no special defense, for the history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of all men everywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life,” Smalls said.