The Life and Legacy of Robert Smalls of South Carolina's Sea Islands

The Life and Legacy of Robert Smalls of South Carolina's Sea Islands PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781590911174
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description

The Life and Legacy of Robert Smalls of South Carolina's Sea Islands

The Life and Legacy of Robert Smalls of South Carolina's Sea Islands PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781590911174
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 48

Get Book Here

Book Description


Yearning to Breathe Free

Yearning to Breathe Free PDF Author: Andrew Billingsley
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643362151
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A sociological approach to appreciating the heroism and legacy of the Gullah statesman On May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls (1839-1915) commandeered a Confederate warship, the Planter, from Charleston harbor and piloted the vessel to cheering seamen of the Union blockade, thus securing his place in the annals of Civil War heroics. Slave, pilot, businessman, statesman, U.S. congressman—Smalls played many roles en route to becoming an American icon, but none of his accomplishments was a solo effort. Sociologist Andrew Billingsley offers the first biography of Smalls to assess the influence of his families—black and white, past and present—on his life and enduring legend. In so doing, Billingsley creates a compelling mosaic of evolving black-white social relations in the American South as exemplified by this famous figure and his descendants. Born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls was raised with his master's family and grew up amid an odd balance of privilege and bondage which instilled in him an understanding of and desire for freedom, culminating in his daring bid for freedom in 1862. Smalls served with distinction in the Union forces at the helm of the Planter and, after the war, he returned to Beaufort to buy the home of his former masters—a house that remained at the center of the Smalls family for a century. A founder of the South Carolina Republican Party, Smalls was elected to the state house of representatives, the state senate, and five times to the United States Congress. Throughout the trials and triumphs of his military and public service, he was surrounded by growing family of supporters. Billingsley illustrates how this support system, coupled with Smalls's dogged resilience, empowered him for success. Writing of subsequent generations of the Smalls family, Billingsley delineates the evolving patterns of opportunity, challenge, and change that have been the hallmarks of the African American experience thanks to the selfless investments in freedom and family made by Robert Smalls of South Carolina.

A Slave in the White House

A Slave in the White House PDF Author: Elizabeth Dowling Taylor
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0230108938
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Chronicles the life of a former slave to James and Dolley Madison, tracing his early years on their plantation, his service in the White House household staff and post-emancipation achievements as a memoirist.

Be Free Or Die: The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls' Escape from Slavery to Union Hero

Be Free Or Die: The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls' Escape from Slavery to Union Hero PDF Author: Cate Lineberry
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250101867
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
It was a mild May morning in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1862, the second year of the Civil War, when a 23-year-old enslaved man named Robert Smalls boldly seized a Confederate steamer. With his wife and two young children hidden on board, Smalls and a small crew ran a gauntlet of heavily armed fortifications in Charleston Harbour and delivered the valuable vessel and the massive guns it carried to nearby Union forces. Smalls' courageous and ingenious act freed him and his family from slavery and immediately made him a Union hero. It also challenged much of the country's view of what African Americans were willing to do for their freedom. In 'Be Free or Die, ' Cate Lineberry tells the remarkable story of Smalls' escape and his many accomplishments during the war, including becoming the first black captain of an Army vessel

Make Good the Promises

Make Good the Promises PDF Author: Kinshasha Holman Conwill
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063160668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
The companion volume to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture exhibit, opening in September 2021 With a Foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Eric Foner and a preface by veteran museum director and historian Spencer Crew An incisive and illuminating analysis of the enduring legacy of the post-Civil War period known as Reconstruction—a comprehensive story of Black Americans’ struggle for human rights and dignity and the failure of the nation to fulfill its promises of freedom, citizenship, and justice. In the aftermath of the Civil War, millions of free and newly freed African Americans were determined to define themselves as equal citizens in a country without slavery—to own land, build secure families, and educate themselves and their children. Seeking to secure safety and justice, they successfully campaigned for civil and political rights, including the right to vote. Across an expanding America, Black politicians were elected to all levels of government, from city halls to state capitals to Washington, DC. But those gains were short-lived. By the mid-1870s, the federal government stopped enforcing civil rights laws, allowing white supremacists to use suppression and violence to regain power in the Southern states. Black men, women, and children suffered racial terror, segregation, and discrimination that confined them to second-class citizenship, a system known as Jim Crow that endured for decades. More than a century has passed since the revolutionary political, social, and economic movement known as Reconstruction, yet its profound consequences reverberate in our lives today. Make Good the Promises explores five distinct yet intertwined legacies of Reconstruction—Liberation, Violence, Repair, Place, and Belief—to reveal their lasting impact on modern society. It is the story of Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Hiram Revels, Ida B. Wells, and scores of other Black men and women who reshaped a nation—and of the persistence of white supremacy and the perpetuation of the injustices of slavery continued by other means and codified in state and federal laws. With contributions by leading scholars, and illustrated with 80 images from the exhibition, Make Good the Promises shows how Black Lives Matter, #SayHerName, antiracism, and other current movements for repair find inspiration from the lessons of Reconstruction. It touches on questions critical then and now: What is the meaning of freedom and equality? What does it mean to be an American? Powerful and eye-opening, it is a reminder that history is far from past; it lives within each of us and shapes our world and who we are.

Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne

Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne PDF Author: Laura Matilda Towne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description


The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: 1514-1861

The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: 1514-1861 PDF Author: Lawrence Sanders Rowland
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570030901
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
Recounting more than three centuries of Spanish and French exploration, English and Huguenor agriculture, and African slave labour, this text traces the history of one of North America's oldest settlements, covering what are now Jasper, Hampton, and part of Alllendale countries.

Freedom's Prophet

Freedom's Prophet PDF Author: Richard S. Newman
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814758266
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Through exhaustive research and graceful writing, Newman shows all the sides of Richard Allen: activist, institution-builder of the AME church, theologian and writer, and pulpit politician.

Gullah Statesman

Gullah Statesman PDF Author: Edward A. Miller, Jr.
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643362976
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
A political biography of the first African American hero of the Civil War A native of Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls was born into slavery but—through acts of remarkable courage and determination—became the first African American hero of the Civil War and one of the most influential African American politicians in South Carolina history. In this largely political biography of Smalls's inspirational story, Edward A. Miller, Jr., traces the triumphs and setbacks of the celebrated U.S. congressman and advocate of compulsory, desegregated public education to illustrate how the life and contributions of this singular individual were indicative of the rise and fall of political influence for all African Americans during this rough transitional period in American history.

Stark Mad Abolitionists

Stark Mad Abolitionists PDF Author: Robert K. Sutton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510716513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
A town at the center of the United States becomes the site of an ongoing struggle for freedom and equality. In May, 1854, Massachusetts was in an uproar. A judge, bound by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, had just ordered a young African American man who had escaped from slavery in Virginia and settled in Boston to be returned to bondage in the South. An estimated fifty thousand citizens rioted in protest. Observing the scene was Amos Adams Lawrence, a wealthy Bostonian, who “waked up a stark mad Abolitionist.” As quickly as Lawrence waked up, he combined his fortune and his energy with others to create the New England Emigrant Aid Company to encourage abolitionists to emigrate to Kansas to ensure that it would be a free state. The town that came to bear Lawrence’s name became the battleground for the soul of America, with abolitionists battling pro-slavery Missourians who were determined to make Kansas a slave state. The onset of the Civil War only escalated the violence, leading to the infamous raid of William Clarke Quantrill when he led a band of vicious Confederates (including Frank James, whose brother Jesse would soon join them) into town and killed two hundred men and boys. Stark Mad Abolitionists shows how John Brown, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, Sam Houston, and Abraham Lincoln all figure into the story of Lawrence and “Bleeding Kansas.” The story of Amos Lawrence’s eponymous town is part of a bigger story of people who were willing to risk their lives and their fortunes in the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.