Grace & Guts

Robert Smalls is a legend that, unfortunately, you likely do not know. His is a story that Hollywood should make into a movie because it is so incredible. He may be the most remarkable man ever to live.

Henry Louis Gates, Harvard professor and historian, writes of him:

Just before dawn on May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls and a crew composed of fellow enslaved people, in the absence of the white captain and his two mates, slipped a cotton steamer off the dock [in Charleston harbour], picked up family members at a rendezvous point, then slowly navigated their way through the port. Smalls, doubling as the captain, even donning the captain's wide-brimmed straw hat to help hide his face, responded with the proper coded signals at two Confederate checkpoints, including at Fort Sumter and other defence positions. Cleared, Smalls sailed into the open seas. Once outside Confederate waters, he had his crew raise a white flag and surrender his ship to the blockading Union fleet. In fewer than four hours, Robert Smalls had done something unimaginable: Amid the Civil War, this enslaved Black man had commandeered a heavily armed Confederate ship and delivered its 17 black passengers (nine men, five women and three children) from slavery to freedom.

As incredible as his daring escape to freedom was, there is even more, to tell of this great man. After freeing his family, and others, he continued to captain the ship he had turned over to the Union Fleet, fighting in the Civil War for the freedom of all African American people. After the war, Mr Smalls became a successful businessman in Philadelphia.

But seeing an opportunity to effect even more significant change in this nation that once enslaved him, he closed his business dealings in Philadelphia. He moved back to South Carolina, where he was then elected to serve in the U.S. Congress. He was one of some 2000 African American Legislators elected to serve in public office during the short-lived period known in U.S. history as Reconstruction.

Mr Smalls served five terms in the U.S. Congress, fighting for the equity of African American people and against the rising tide of Jim Crow.

Yet, there is more still to this incredible man's greatness. In 1865 he accomplished what might be the most remarkable feat. He bought his former Slaveholder's mansion so that he could raise his family there.

Not only did he buy his former Slaveholder's mansion… but through what can only be called grace… wonderful grace… magnanimous grace, he allowed his former Slaveholder's widow to live in his family's spare room.

What type of person must you be to show such grace?

I hope to be able to emulate such grace in my own life.

When I visited the Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C., with my eldest daughter, Eden, we stopped for a moment and marvelled at the statue of Mr Smalls. It is life-sized and, by height and mass, does not feature him as a very imposing man. Yet, because of the courage instilled in him, and an obvious Christ-like graciousness that permeated his soul, he stands as a giant among men.

My encouragement to you, to us all, is to continue learning the history of our home and the men and women who shaped it. Do so beyond the scope of Black History Month. Do it as a part of shaping your posture toward the present and the future because you stand informed of the past.