Robert Smalls​ escaped slavery in Charleston by commandeering a Confederate ship and became a top Union naval officer and South Carolina lawmaker.

The likeness of Robert Smalls, the escaped slave turned South Carolina lawmaker, will be remembered as the first African-American person honored with a statue at the State House at the hands of a ...

Artist Basil Watson is creating the first statue of an African American, Civil War hero Robert Smalls, to be placed on South Carolina's Statehouse grounds.

A portrait of Robert Smalls from between 1870 and 1880. The unanimous passage of the bill to honor Smalls marks a significant shift in South Carolina’s recognition of its history.

Robert Smalls was born in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina, and died in 1915 in his hometown a free, but somewhat forgotten man tossed aside by a Southern society determined to keep Blacks inferior.

A man named Robert Smalls escaped slavery, along with his family and other slaves, by stealing a Confederate ship and was later elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Robert Smalls of South Carolina was an enslaved ship’s pilot for the Confederacy when he decided to seize a transport vessel and trade it for his freedom.