Artwork Details
- Title
- Robert Smalls: Wheeling Freedom
- Artist
- Date
- 2015
- Location
- Dimensions
- 61 × 43 1⁄2 in. (154.9 × 110.5 cm) irregular
- Copyright
- © 2023, L'Merchie Frazier
- Credit Line
- Gift of Fleur S. Bresler
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- organdy, tulle, and cotton batt
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Architecture — boat
- African American
- Occupation — other — reformer
- Portrait male — Smalls, Robert
- Portrait male — Smalls, Robert — bust
- Object Number
- 2023.40.10
Artwork Description
L’Merchie Frazier
born 1951, Jacksonville, FL
resides Boston, MA
Robert Smalls: Wheeling Freedom
2015
organdy, tulle, and cotton batting
In Black Reconstruction, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that during Reconstruction, “the slave went free; stood for a brief moment in the sun; ??then moved back again toward slavery.” Robert Smalls, featured here in front of the United States Capitol, was elected to the House of Representatives in 1874, during that brief moment in the sun???, before Jim Crow laws restricted Black participation in politics and society?.
Smalls was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1839. At the start of the Civil War, he worked as an enslaved shipman on the CSS Planter in Charleston Harbor. On May 12, 1862, he and his fellow enslaved crew members took the opportunity to seize their freedom when the ship’s white officers were ashore. The group sailed away, picking up family members at a nearby wharf before turning the vessel over to the United States Navy. Smalls was awarded prize money and promoted to captain of the Planter before serving five terms in Congress.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2023.40.10
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