Robert Smalls

Congressman Robert Smalls represented South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1875 to 1879, 1882 to 1883, and from 1884 to 1887 (44th-45th, 47th, and 48th-49th Congresses). Smalls was enslaved until May 1862, when he piloted a Confederate army ship into Union waters. He soon became active in politics and, by the 1870s, was an influential leader in South Carolina. Smalls fought segregation in the military, railroads, and Washington, D.C. eating establishments and opposed Black American emigration to the western United States and Liberia. He served on the Agriculture, Militia, Manufactures, and War Claims committees.