Saturday, March 26, 2016
Friday, March 25, 2016
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Fred Hampton
From Wikipedia
Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an American activist and revolutionary, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and deputy chairman of the national BPP. Hampton was murdered while sleeping at his apartment during a raid by a tactical unit of the Cook County, Illinois State's Attorney's Office, in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in December 1969. A civil lawsuit filed in 1970 resulted in 1982 in a settlement of $1.85 million. The background and events of Hampton's murder have been chronicled in several documentary films.
Hampton was born on August 30, 1948, in present-day Summit, Illinois, and grew up in Maywood, a suburb west of the city. His parents had moved north from Louisiana, and both worked at the Argo Starch Company. As a youth, Hampton was gifted both in the classroom and on the athletic field, and strongly desired to play center field for the New York Yankees. He graduated from Proviso East High School with honors in 1966. Following his graduation, Hampton enrolled at Triton Junior College in nearby River Grove, Illinois, where he majored in pre-law. He planned to become more familiar with the legal system, to use it as a defense against police. He and fellow Black Panthers would follow police, watching out for police brutality, and used this knowledge of law as a defense.
He also became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and assumed leadership of the Youth Council of the organization's West Suburban Branch. In his capacity as an NAACP youth organizer, Hampton began to demonstrate his natural leadership abilities; from a community of 27,000, he was able to muster a youth group 500-members strong. He worked to get more and better recreational facilities established in the neighborhoods, and to improve educational resources for Maywood's impoverished black community. Through his involvement with the NAACP, Hampton hoped to achieve social change through nonviolent activism and community organizing.
About the same time that Hampton was successfully organizing young African-Americans for the NAACP, the Black Panther Party (BPP) started rising to national prominence. Hampton was quickly attracted to the Black Panthers' approach, which was based on a ten-point program that integrated black self-determination and certain elements of Maoism. Hampton joined the Party and relocated to downtown Chicago, and in November 1968 he joined the Party's nascent Illinois chapter—founded by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer Bob Brown in late 1967. Over the next year, Hampton and his associates made a number of significant achievements in Chicago. Perhaps his most important accomplishment was his brokering of a nonaggression pact between Chicago's most powerful street gangs. Emphasizing that racial and ethnic conflict between gangs would only keep its members entrenched in poverty, Hampton strove to forge a class-conscious, multi-racial alliance between the BPP, the Young Patriots Organization, and the Young Lords under the leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez.
Fred Hampton met Cha Cha and the Young Lords in the Chicago Lincoln Park Neighborhood, the day after the Young Lords were in the news after they had occupied a police community workshop meeting, held on the second floor hall of the Chicago 18th District Police Station. Later, the Rainbow Coalition was joined nationwide by the Students for a Democratic Society ("SDS"), the Brown Berets, and the Red Guard Party. In May 1969, Hampton called a press conference to announce that this "rainbow coalition" had formed. It was a phrase coined by Hampton and made popular over the years by Rev. Jesse Jackson, who eventually appropriated the name in forming his own, unrelated, coalition, Rainbow/PUSH.
Hampton's organizing skills, substantial oratorical gifts, and personal charisma allowed him to rise quickly in the Black Panthers. Once he became leader of the Chicago chapter, he organized weekly rallies, worked closely with the BPP's local People's Clinic, taught political education classes every morning at 6am, and launched a project for community supervision of the police. Hampton was also instrumental in the BPP's Free Breakfast Program. When Brown left the Party with Stokely Carmichael in the FBI-fomented SNCC/Panther split, Hampton assumed chairmanship of the Illinois state BPP, automatically making him a national BPP deputy chairman. As the Panther leadership across the country began to be decimated by the impact of the FBI's COINTELPRO, Hampton's prominence in the national hierarchy increased rapidly and dramatically. Eventually, Hampton was in line to be appointed to the Party's Central Committee's Chief of Staff. He would have achieved this position had it not been for his assassination on the morning of December 4, 1969.
While Hampton impressed many of the people with whom he came into contact as an effective leader and talented communicator, those very qualities marked him as a major threat in the eyes of the FBI. It began keeping close tabs on his activities. Subsequent investigations have shown that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was determined to prevent the formation of a cohesive Black movement in the United States. Hoover saw the Panthers,Young Patriots,Young Lords and similar radical coalitions forged by Hampton in Chicago, as a frightening steppingstone toward the creation of just such a revolutionary body that could, in its strength, cause a radical change in the U.S. government.
The FBI opened a file on Hampton in 1967. In 1968, Hampton's mother's phone was tapped in February 1968, and Hampton was placed on the Bureau's "Agitator Index" as a "key militant leader" by May. In late 1968, the Racial Matters squad of the FBI's Chicago field office brought in an individual named William O'Neal, who had recently been arrested twice, for interstate car theft and impersonating a federal officer. In exchange for having his felony charges dropped and a monthly stipend, O'Neal apparently agreed to infiltrate the BPP as a counterintelligence operative. He joined the Party and quickly rose in the organization, becoming Director of Chapter security and Hampton's bodyguard. In 1969, the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that the agent's investigation of the BPP revealed that in his city, at least, the Panthers were primarily feeding breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying the career ambitions of the agent were directly related to his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".
By means of anonymous letters, the FBI sowed distrust and eventually instigated a split between the Panthers and the Rangers, with O'Neal himself instigating an armed clash between the two on April 2, 1969. The Panthers became effectively isolated from their power base in the ghetto, so the FBI went to work to undermine its ties with other radical organizations. O'Neal was instructed to "create a rift" between the Party and SDS, whose Chicago headquarters was only blocks from that of the Panthers. The Bureau released a batch of racist cartoons in the Panthers' name, aimed at alienating white activists, and launched a disinformation program to forestall the realization of the Rainbow Coalition but nevertheless it was formed with an alliance of the Young Patriots and Young Lords. In repeated directives, Hoover demanded that the COINTELPRO personnel investigate the Rainbow Coalition and "destroy what the [BPP] stands for" and "eradicate its 'serve the people' programs".
Documents secured by Senate investigators in the early 1970s revealed that the FBI actively encouraged violence between the Panthers and other radical groups, which provoked multiple murders in cities throughout the country. On May 26, 1969, Hampton was successfully prosecuted in a case related to a theft in 1967 of $71 worth of Good Humor Bars in Maywood. He was sentenced to two to five years but managed to obtain an appeal bond, and was released in August. On July 16, there was an armed confrontation between party members and the Chicago Police Department, which left one BPP member mortally wounded and six others arrested on serious charges. In early October, Hampton and his girlfriend, Deborah Johnson (now known as Akua Njeri), pregnant with their first child (Fred Hampton, Jr.), rented a four-and-a-half room apartment on 2337 West Monroe Street to be closer to BPP headquarters. O'Neal reported to his superiors that much of the Panthers' "provocative" stockpile of arms was being stored there and drew them a map of the layout of the apartment. In early November, Hampton traveled to California on a speaking engagement to the UCLA Law Students Association. While there, he met with the remaining BPP national hierarchy, who appointed him to the Party's Central Committee. Shortly thereafter, he was to assume the position of Chief of Staff and major spokesman.
"We expected about twenty Panthers to be in the apartment when the police raided the place. Only two of those black niggers were killed, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark."
— FBI Special Agent Gregg York
Fred Hampton was quickly moving up the ranks in the Black Panther Party, and his talent as a political organizer was described as remarkable. In 1968, he was on the verge of creating a merger between the BPP and a southside street gang with thousands of members, which would have doubled the size of the national BPP. Moreover, it meant an alliance extending the Black Panther Party reach and influence united with white and Latino organizers, a step which Hoover viewed as an untenable ultimate threat and ordered an intensified FBI crackdown to the level of "any means necessary" to decimate the BPP.
In November 1969, Hampton traveled to California and met with the National BPP leadership at UCLA. It was there that they offered him a position on the Central Committee as the chief of staff and asked him to serve as the national spokesman for the BPP. While Hampton was out of town, two Chicago police officers, John J. Gilhooly and Frank G. Rappaport, were killed in a gun battle with Panthers on the night of November 13. A total of nine police officers were shot; a 19-year-old Panther named Spurgeon Winter, Jr. was killed by police and another Panther, Lawrence S. Bell, was charged with murder. In an editorial headlined "No Quarter for Wild Beasts", the Chicago Tribune urged that Chicago police be given the order to approach all Panther suspects prepared to shoot. The FBI, determined to prevent any enhancement of the BPP leadership's effectiveness, decided to set up an arms raid on Hampton's Chicago apartment. FBI informant William O'Neal provided them with detailed information about Hampton's apartment, including the layout of furniture and the bed in which Hampton and his girlfriend slept. An augmented, 14-man team of the SAO—Special Prosecutions Unit—was organized for a pre-dawn raid armed with a warrant for illegal weapons.
On the evening of December 3, Hampton taught a political education course at a local church, which was attended by most members. Afterwards, as was typical, several Panthers retired to the Monroe Street apartment to spend the night, including Hampton and Deborah Johnson (also known as Akua Njeri), Blair Anderson, Ronald "Doc" Satchell, Harold Bell, Verlina Brewer, Louis Truelock, Brenda Harris, and Mark Clark. Upon arrival, they were met by O'Neal, who had prepared a late dinner, which the group ate around midnight. O'Neal had slipped the powerful barbiturate sleep agent, secobarbitol, into a drink that Hampton consumed during the dinner, in order to sedate Hampton so he would not awaken during the subsequent raid. O'Neal left at this point, and, at about 1:30 a.m., Hampton fell asleep mid-sentence talking to his mother on the telephone. Although Hampton was not known to take drugs, Cook County chemist Eleanor Berman would report that she ran two separate tests which each showed a powerful barbiturate had been introduced into Hampton's blood. An FBI chemist would later fail to find similar traces, but Berman stood by her findings
The raid was organized by the office of Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan, using officers attached to his office. Hanrahan had recently been the subject of a large amount of public criticism by Hampton, who had made speeches about how Hanrahan's talk about a "war on gangs" was really rhetoric used to enable him to carry out a "war on black youth". At 4:00 a.m., the heavily armed police team arrived at the site, divided into two teams, eight for the front of the building and six for the rear. At 4:45 a.m., they stormed into the apartment. Mark Clark, sitting in the front room of the apartment with a shotgun in his lap, was on security duty. He was shot in the heart and died instantly. His gun fired a single round which was later determined to be caused by a reflexive death convulsion after the raiding team shot him; this was the only shot the Panthers fired. Automatic gunfire then converged at the head of the south bedroom where Hampton slept, unable to awaken as a result of the barbiturates the FBI infiltrator had slipped into his drink. He was lying on a mattress in the bedroom with his fiancée, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with their child. Two officers found him wounded in the shoulder, and fellow Black Panther Harold Bell reported that he heard the following exchange:
"That's Fred Hampton."
"Is he dead?... Bring him out."
"He's barely alive.
"He'll make it."
Two shots were heard, which were later discovered were fired point blank in Hampton's head. According to Johnson, one officer then said:
"He's good and dead now."
Hampton's body was dragged into the doorway of the bedroom and left in a pool of blood. The officers then directed their gunfire towards the remaining Panthers, who had been sleeping in the north bedroom (Satchel, Anderson, and Brewer). Verlina Brewer, Ronald "Doc" Satchel, Blair Anderson, and Brenda Harris were seriously wounded, then beaten and dragged into the street, where they were arrested on charges of aggravated assault and the attempted murder of the officers. They were each held on US$100,000 bail.
Hampton's fiancée, Deborah Johnson, was sleeping next to him when the police raid began. She was forcibly removed from the room by the police officers while Hampton lay unconscious in bed. The seven Panthers who survived the raid were indicted by a grand jury on charges of attempted murder, armed violence, and various other weapons charges. These charges were subsequently dropped. During the trial, the Chicago police department claimed that the Panthers were the first to fire shots; however, a later investigation found that the Chicago police fired between ninety and ninety-nine shots while the Panthers had only shot twice. After the raid, the apartment was left unguarded, which allowed the Panthers to send some members to investigate.
They were accompanied by a videographer and the footage was later released in the 1971 documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton. After a break-in at an FBI office in Pennsylvania, the existence of COINTELPRO, an illegal counter-intelligence program, was brought to light. The awareness of this program caused many to suspect that the police raid and the shooting of Fred Hampton were parts of the program's initiative. One of the documents that were released after the break-in was a floor plan of Hampton's apartment. Another document outlined a deal the FBI brokered with the deputy attorney general to conceal the FBI's role in the assassination of Hampton and the existence of COINTELPRO.
At a press conference the next day, the police announced the arrest team had been attacked by the "violent" and "extremely vicious" Panthers and had defended themselves accordingly. In a second press conference on December 8, the assault team was praised for their "remarkable restraint", "bravery", and "professional discipline" for not killing all the Panthers present. Photographic evidence was presented of "bullet holes" allegedly made by shots fired by the Panthers, but this was soon challenged by reporters (although the Chicago Tribune initially published these photos in support of the police action). An internal investigation was undertaken, and the assault team was exonerated of any wrongdoing. Hampton's funeral was attended by 5,000 people, and he was eulogized by such black leaders as Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King's successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In his eulogy, Jackson noted that "when Fred was shot in Chicago, black people in particular, and decent people in general, bled everywhere." On December 6, members of the Weather Underground destroyed numerous police vehicles in a retaliatory bombing spree at 3600 N. Halsted Street, Chicago.
The police described the police raid as a "shootout". The Black Panthers countered Hanrahan’s claim of a "shoot out" by describing it as a "shoot-in", not a shootout, because all but one bullet was fired by the police. A firestorm erupted on December 11 and 12 between the two competing daily newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. At that time, the Chicago Tribune was considered the politically conservative newspaper, and the Chicago Sun-Times was considered the politically liberal newspaper. On December 11, the Chicago Tribune published a page 1 article titled, "Exclusive – Hanrahan, Police Tell Panther Story." The article included photographs supplied by Hanrahan’s office that depicted bullet holes in a thin white curtain and door jam as evidence that the Panthers fired multiple bullets at the police. The firestorm was triggered in part by Jack Challem, editor of the Wright College News, the student newspaper at Wright Junior College in Chicago. Challem visited the Hampton apartment on Saturday, December 6, and took numerous photographs. The house was not sealed as a crime scene, and a member of the Black Panthers was allowing visitors to tour the apartment. Challem’s photographs did not show any bullet holes. On the morning of December 12, after the Chicago Tribune article was published, Challem contacted a reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, showed him the photographs, and encouraged him to visit the apartment. That evening, the Chicago Sun-Times published a page 1 article with the headline: “Those ‘bullet holes’ aren’t.” According to the article, the alleged bullet holes (supposedly the result of the Panthers shooting in the direction of the police) were nail heads.
But Challem’s story and photographs, published in the Wright College News, tell a different story and pose unanswered questions. First, there were no nail heads (or bullet holes) in his photographs. The implication, though speculative, is that someone tampered with the crime scene between December 6 and December 12 to make it appear as though the “nail heads” were innocently mistaken as “bullet holes.” Second, it is difficult, if not impossible, to photograph a bullet hole in a thin white curtain without retouching the photograph, another sign that evidence had been tampered with. Four weeks after witnessing Hampton's death at the hands of the police, Deborah Johnson gave birth to Fred Hampton, Jr.. Civil rights activists Roy Wilkins and Ramsey Clark (styled as "The Commission of Inquiry into the Black Panthers and the Police") subsequently alleged that the Chicago police had killed Fred Hampton without justification or provocation and had violated the Panthers' constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure."The Commission" further alleged that the Chicago Police Department had imposed a summary punishment on the Panthers. The federal grand jury did not return any indictment against anyone involved with the planning or execution of the raid. The officers involved in the raid were cleared by a grand jury of any crimes. The FBI informant, William O'Neal, committed suicide in 1990 after admitting his involvement in setting up the raid.
Shortly afterwards, Cook County coroner Andrew Toman began forming a special six-member coroner's jury to hold an inquest into the deaths of Hampton and Clark. On December 23, Toman announced four additions to the jury which included two African-American men: physician Theodore K. Lawless and attorney Julian B. Wilkins, the son of J. Ernest Wilkins, Sr. He stated the four were selected from a group of candidates submitted to his office by groups and individuals representing both Chicago's black and white communities. Civil rights leaders and spokesmen for the black community were reported to have been disappointed with the selection. An official with the Chicago Urban League said: "I would have had more confidence in the jury if one of them had been a black man who has a rapport with the young and the grass roots in the community." Gus Savage said that such a man to whom the community could relate need not be black. The jury eventually included a third black man who was a member of the first coroner's jury sworn in on December 4.
The blue-ribbon panel convened for the inquest on January 6, 1970, and on January 21 ruled the deaths of Hampton and Clark to be justifiable homicide. The jury qualified their verdict on the death of Hampton as "based solely and exclusively on the evidence presented to this inquisition"; police and expert witness provided the only testimony during the inquest. Jury foreman James T. Hicks stated that they could not consider the charges of the Black Panthers in the apartment who stated that the police entered the apartment shooting; those who survived the raid were reported to have refused to testify during the inquest because they faced criminal charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault during the raid. Attorneys for the Hampton and Clark families also did not introduce any witnesses during the proceedings, but described the inquest as "a well-rehearsed theatrical performance designed to vindicate the police officers". State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan said the verdict was recognition "of the truthfulness of our police officers' account of the events"
The Assassination of Fred Hampton How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther 1 of 3
The Assassination of Fred Hampton How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther 2 of 3
The Assassination of Fred Hampton How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther 3 of 3
Fred Hampton - "Political Prisoner"
Fred Hampton BPP Eyes on the Prize 12 A Nation of Law?, 1967 1968
Fred Hampton - On The Importance Of Education Prior To Action
The murder of Fred Hampton
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Mary Smith Peake
Mary Peake was a teacher, best known for starting a school for the children of former slaves in the summer of 1861, under the shade of a tree that would become known as the Emancipation Oak in present-day Hampton, Virginia. This makeshift outdoor classroom provided the foundation of what would become Hampton University.
In 1823, Mary Smith Kelsey was born free in Norfolk, Virginia. Her father was an Englishman "of rank and culture" and her mother was a free woman of color, described as light-skinned. When Mary was six, her mother sent her to the town of Alexandria (then part of the District of Columbia) to attend school while living with her aunt Mary Paine, in a house owned by abolitionist sympathizer Rollins Fowle. Mary Peake studied there for about ten years, attending a select colored school where she studied dressmaking, reading, writing and arithmetic. In addition to this, Mary acquired a knowledge of dressmaking and various kinds of needlework. Though fond of general reading and study, there was no book Mary loved more than the Bible, and she committed large portions of it to memory.
Growing sectional tensions and fear of slave unrest prompted local lawmakers to close all schools for free blacks in Alexandria in 1839. The US Congress also enacted a law prohibiting free people of color in the District of Columbia from being educated.
Peake was deeply religious, and upon her return to Norfolk at the age of sixteen she joined the First Baptist Church, then under the direction of antislavery pastor Rev. James A. Mitchell. In 1847 at the age of twenty-four, Peake moved to Hampton, Virginia, supporting herself by making clothes and she secretly began teaching from her home, instructing African Americans of all ages. She also founded the Daughters of Zion to provide aid to the poor and the sick. In 1851 she married Thomas Peake, a freed slave who worked in the merchant marine. He was intelligent, pious, and in every respect a congenial companion, with whom she lived happily until her death. They had a daughter named Hattie, whom they nicknamed Daisy. and they lived together until Confederate troops burned the black section of town while retreating from a Union army attack in 1861.
When three slaves fled to Union lines at Fortress Monroe in May 1861, General Benjamin Butler, Union commander at the fort, decided that Virginia's secession from the Union nullified his obligation to return the slaves to their owners under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. He was also aware that these three slaves had been employed building Confederate fortifications, and therefore were being used to wage war against the Union.
Butler declared the three fugitives contraband of war, and decreed that any escaping slaves reaching Union lines would not be returned to bondage. This resulted in a steady stream of enslaved people from neighboring plantations who flocked to Union lines hoping for liberation. Fortress Monroe became a place of refuge.
Butler's decision to classify the slaves who gathered there as contraband of war changed the fate of many African Americans, enabling hundreds to reach freedom behind Union lines. Butler received the approval of Congress with the passage of the First Confiscation Act on August 6, 1861, which announced that any enslaved person used for a military purpose against the United States could be confiscated.
As the number of former slaves grew too large to be housed inside the fort, they began to build housing from the ruins of Hampton, outside the fort. They called their new settlement the Grand Contraband Camp. The contraband slaves of the Virginia Peninsula are credited with establishing the first self-contained African American community, where they quickly created schools, churches, businesses and social organizations.
Many contraband slaves and free blacks volunteered to serve in the Union Army, forming the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT). Some also became scouts, guides, spies, cooks, hospital workers, blacksmiths and mule-drivers, contributing immensely to the Union war effort for the balance of the Civil War. Numerous Union officers became more aware of the plight of the contrabands and made contributions to their continued education.
Many of the displaced African American families from Hampton , forced to seek refuge at nearby Fort Monroe. In September 1861, Peake started a school near the fortress, within the present grounds of Hampton University. Her enrollment grew from six to more than fifty students in a matter of days.
Peake continued as the primary teacher at Fortress Monroe until she became too ill to continue. Her strong will to educate the freedmen and their children was no match for the hold tuberculosis had on her frail body. Shortly after Christmas 1861, she was forced to give up teaching and was confined to her bed. Mary Peake died February 22, 1862 of tuberculosis.
Although her personal role in freedmen's education was cut short, the very ground upon which she taught would later become home to the renowned Hampton Institute, and her own commitment to the education of her people would be emulated by other African Americans. The self-sacrifice and commitment of Mary Peake and others helped dispel the racist assumptions that many white Americans shared about black inferiority.
Emancipation Oak
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Friday, March 11, 2016
Robert Smalls
In 1862, a 22-year-old slave named Robert Smalls accomplished an unthinkable feat of cunning, deception, and bravery: he stole a ship. But it wasn’t just any ship that this crafty young man decided to nab. No, he knew what he needed and had meticulously planned to get it. His vessel of choice was fully stocked with hundreds of rounds of ammunition,
The Gun-boat "Planter," which was stolen by Robert Smalls, May 1862.
Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, April 5, 1839 – February 23, 1915, in a cabin behind the house of his master, Henry McKee, on 511 Prince Street in Beaufort, South Carolina. His mother Lydia Polite,was a slave of McKee. Robert grew up in the city under the influence of the Lowcountry Gullah culture of his mother.
Compared to slaves in the field, Lydia and Robert faced less horrific conditions, and this worried Lydia. She wanted her son to see and understand the savagery and inhumanity of enslavement, so Lydia, with presumably the heaviest of hearts, sent Robert into the fields to experience true slavery, whipping posts and all. This education forever changed Robert, igniting within him a spirit of defiance and rebellion that would later lead to a covert, nail-biting escape to freedom.
Smalls' master sent him to Charleston at the age of 12 to be hired out, with the money to be paid to his master. He began in a hotel, then became a lamplighter on Charleston's streets. In his teen years, his love of the sea led him to work on the docks and wharves of Charleston.This arrangement continued until Smalls was 18 when he negotiated to keep all but $15 of his monthly pay, a deal which allowed Smalls to begin saving money. Smalls met a hotel maid, Hannah Jones, whom he married on December 24, 1856. She was five years his senior and already had a daughter. The savings that he accumulated were later used to purchase his wife and daughter from their owner for a sum of $800. Their first child together, Elizabeth Lydia Smalls, was born in February 1858. In 1861 they had a son, Robert Jr., who died at the age of two.
Smalls became a stevedore (dockworker), a rigger, a sail maker, and eventually worked his way up to being a wheelman (more or less a pilot, though slaves would not be called by that title). He became very knowledgeable about Charleston harbor.
Smalls's daring escape succeeded. Besides her two small cannons, the Planter had four valuable artillery pieces aboard as cargo as well as their ammunition, intended for a Confederate fort. Even more valuable, however, were the code book containing the Confederates' secret signals, and a map of the mines and torpedoes laid around Charleston harbor.
Smalls piloted the ship past the five Confederate forts that guarded the harbor. They suspected nothing, since he had given the correct Confederate signals. The Planter passed Fort Sumter approximately 4:30am, and he headed straight for the U.S. fleet, flying a white bed sheet as a sign of surrender. He was spotted by the USS Onward, which was about to fire until a sailor noticed the white flag. When the Onward′s captain boarded the Planter, Smalls requested to raise the United States flag. He then surrendered the Planter and her cargo to the United States Navy.
Smalls quickly became well known in the North. Newspapers described his actions, and Congress passed a bill, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, that awarded Smalls and his crewmen the prize money for the Planter. Smalls' share was US$1,500 ($35,555 in 2016). He met President Lincoln two weeks later and gave a first hand account of his adventure.
Smalls' bravery became a major argument for allowing African Americans to serve in the Union Army. He worked with the Navy until March 1863, when he was transferred to the Army. Due to racism at that time, he only served as a civilian. By his own account, Smalls was present at 17 engagements in the Civil War.
With the encouragement of Major General David Hunter, the Union commander at Port Royal, Smalls went to Washington, D.C., in August 1862 with Mansfield French, to try to persuade Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to permit black men to fight for the Union. He was successful and Stanton signed an order permitting up to 5,000 African Americans to enlist in the Union forces at Port Royal. Those who did were organized as the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Regiment (Colored).
Smalls served as a pilot for the Union Navy. In the fall of 1862, Planter had been transferred to the Union Army for service near Fort Pulaski. The Union got Smalls as a naval pilot. Smalls was later reassigned to USS Planter, now a Union transport. On April 7, 1863, he piloted ironclad USS Keokuk in a major Union attack on Fort Sumter. The attack failed, and Keokuk was badly damaged. Her crew was rescued shortly before the ship sank.
In December 1863, Smalls became the first black captain of a vessel in the service of the United States. On December 1, 1863, the Planter had been caught in a crossfire between Union and Confederate forces. The ship's commander, Captain Nickerson, decided to surrender. Smalls refused, fearing that the black crewmen would not be treated as prisoners of war and might be summarily killed. Taking command, Smalls piloted the ship out of range of the Confederate guns. For his bravery, Smalls was named to replace Nickerson as the Planter′s captain.
Smalls returned with the Planter to Charleston harbor in April 1865 for the ceremonial raising of the American flag upon Ft. Sumter.
He was a delegate at several Republican National Conventions and participated in the South Carolina Republican State conventions.
During the Reconstruction Era, Smalls was elected a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1865 and 1870, and the South Carolina Senate between 1871 and 1874. He also served briefly as the commander of the South Carolina Militia with the rank of major general.
In 1874, Smalls was elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he served from 1875 to 1879. From 1882 to 1883 he represented South Carolina's 5th congressional district in the House. The state legislature gerrymandered to change the boundaries, including Beaufort and other heavily black, coastal areas in South Carolina's 7th congressional district, making the others with high white majorities. Smalls was elected from the 7th district and served from 1884 to 1887. He was a member of the 44th, 45th, and 47th through 49th U.S. Congresses. During consideration of a bill to reduce and restructure the United States Army, Smalls introduced an amendment that “Hereafter in the enlistment of men in the Army ... no distinction whatsoever shall be made on account of race or color.” The amendment was not considered by Congress. He is the last Republican to have been elected from the 5th district until 2010. He was the longest serving African-American member of Congress until Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in the late 20th Century.
After the Compromise of 1877, the U.S. government withdrew its remaining forces from South Carolina and other Southern states. White Democrats had used violence and election fraud to regain control in the state legislature. As part of wide-ranging Southern white efforts to reduce African-American political power, Smalls was charged and convicted of taking a bribe five years earlier in connection with the awarding of a printing contract. He was pardoned as part of an agreement in which charges were also dropped against Democrats who had been accused of election fraud. [Foner, p. 198]
Smalls was active politically into the twentieth century. He was a delegate to the 1895 South Carolina constitutional convention, and, together with five other black politicians, strongly opposed white Democrat efforts to disfranchise black citizens. They wrote an article for the New York World to publicize the issues, but the constitution was ratified. It and similar constitutions passed court challenges of the time.
Smalls was appointed U.S. Collector of Customs in Beaufort, serving from 1889 to 1911 with only a short break in service. He lived as owner of the house in which he had been a slave.
Robert Smalls
The Audacity of Robert Smalls | Michael B. Moore | TEDxStMarksSchool
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