South Carolina plans to erect a statue honoring Robert Smalls, a man who escaped slavery to become a Civil War hero and a lawmaker. It will be the first monument to an individual Black figure at the South Carolina State House in Columbia,

South Carolina is preparing to put up the first individual statue of an African American on its Statehouse lawn

South Carolina is preparing to put up its first individual statue for an African American on its Statehouse lawn, honoring a man who put on Confederate clothes in order to steal a slaveholder’s ship and sail his family and a dozen others to freedom during the Civil War.

The best way to sum up Robert Smalls’ life is it was a fight for freedom as a slave, as a pilot and as a statesman.”