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As I said before, we wanted to talk about the famous and the not as famous figures of African American History this month. And honestly, despite getting A’s in history and all, this is a hero of our country I had never heard of until a few friends posted a meme about him and his story. And there have been attempts at making a movie about his life, but none have gotten to the screen yet, but believe me, when it does, it will be worth it to see. Robert Small was born a slave in 1839 in South Carolina. Now, his mother was one of their owner’s favorites. She had made it from field hand to servant in the house. At first, their owners were not having Robert work in the fields or the like, but his mother asked for and was granted a chance for him to work for awhile on their fields. She wanted him to know that the life they had was not the plight of most slaves. By Age 12, he was sent as laborer for hire in Charleston where his master got 15 of every 16 dollars he earned per week. He feel in love with the ships and the seas and worked as a longshoreman, sail maker, a rigger, and even up to a wheelman. Slaves were not allowed to have the title helmsman, but that is the job he did and he became very knowledgeable about Charleston Harbor. By Age 17, he had married Hannah Jones, an enslaved hotel maid in Charleston. Together they had two children and he worked hard to try to win their freedom. But the cost was $800 per child, that’s just shy of $30,000 in 2024 money. He did manage to save an eighth of it, but was never able to reach that amount. The Civil War broke out and he was conscripted into the Confederate Navy and was assigned to the CSS Planter a military transport ship. And served the ship well, gaining the trust of the captain and free crew. On May 12th, he put a bold plan into action, freedom. The free crew and captain were going ashore and he asked for permission for the slave crew’s families to come aboard and visit them. This had been allowed before and was again, so long as they were gone by curfew. But Smalls had no intention of getting them off at curfew, they instead stole the ship with their families on board, and headed out to me the Union blockade. Along the way, they had to fool the crews of six confederate harbor forts. Smalls instructed the crew on the proper signals and he wore the captain’s uniform and did his best to mimic his movements. And the gambit paid off. The last fort figured out too late that the ship was not supposed to be there. Smalls sailed the ship out to the Union ship USS Onward, and surrendered the ship and the cargo to the Union navy. He and his crew had earned their families’ freedom and were paid a large prize for the ship, Smalls’ share alone was $1,500 (just shy of $60,000 today). And he was hailed as a hero in the north. Eventually he helped earn northern African Americans the right to serve in segregated Army units. He himself was allowed to serve in the Navy, eventually serving as a captain of a ship, and again hailed as a hero for his actions there. There was controversy about it, but he was one of the few African Americans paid a pension from their service. He learned to read and right in just nine months, and became an entrepreneur. At first offering services like education to his fellow freed men. And even ended up being given his former owner’s home and successfully fending off a lawsuit from that owner, which helped other similarly situated former slaves. He then became active, during the brief time when Reconstruction made this possible in the South in politics. He was elected to as a delegate to the South Carolina Constitutional Convention in 1868, then to the South Carolina House of Representatives. He was later appointed to and retained his seat in the South Carolina State Senate. He worked his way to delegate to the Republican National Convention, while serving in the South Carolina Militia where he rose to the rank of Major General. In 1874 he served in the US House of Representatives from 1874 to 1887. He even tried to integrate the US military in 1875, but sadly his amendment failed. He was only knocked out of politics by a conviction for taking a bribe, a charge that was later subject to a pardon as many of thos charges were made for political reasons and gains. Until the mid 20th Century he was the second longest serving African American in Congress. He was later appointed to positions by several US presidents. And while few of us have heard of him, not one, but two US ships have been named in his honor. The most recent, the USS Robert Smalls a Ticonderoga class (very capable and important cruiser) CG-62 is still in commission and protecting US aircraft carriers today. Robert finally died in 1915 at the age of 75. So, I hope we all get to watch a movie about this hero of American military and public service and that a few more people now known about an amazing American.
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As I’ve said we’re going to be profiling one prominent African American each week of Black History month, some more well know, but maybe details you don’t know, others most of us haven’t heard of. This is one of those well known ones, but you may not know the whole story. Now I said our series would be about those who you may not know about, but I am also including two figures you may not know the whole story about. This is one of the later. Nichelle Nichols was born Grace Dell Nichols in a suburb of Chicago, where her father a favor work became Mayor and Chief Magistrate. She hated her name and asked her parents to let her change it. They suggested Nichelle, which they said meant "victorious maiden". Ms. Nichols began her professional career as a singer and dancer in Chicago. She then toured the United States and Canada with the bands of Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton. She also became a stage actress, and occasionally modeling. In 1967, Nichols, was cast in the role that made her a pop culture icon. Lieutenant Nyota Uhura on Star Trek. She was one of the first Black women featured in a major television series. And fo her to be a bridge officer was unprecedented at that time. The series didn’t stop with her though. There were black actors cast as doctors, brilliant scientists, captains and admirals. She told a great story about being part of Star Trek in an NPR interveiw in 2011. Nichelle was very discouraged after the first season of Star Trek. Her character’s lines kept getting cut, she was getting all kinds of racist mail, and she really dreamed of being a Broadway star and the offers for that started to roll in. She went so far as to draft her resignation letter. But before she turned it in, she went an NAACP fundraiser in Beverly Hills. One of the promoters of the event took her aside and said someone who was a huge fan of her and the show wanted to talk to her. She, of course, espected a typical Trekker, but up to her walked Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He warmly greeted her and told her he was a huge fan of hers and the show. She basically thanked him, but said she was just the black lady on the bridge who answered the space phone. He changed her mind about that and quitting saying “Nichelle, whether you like it or not, you have become a symbol, If you leave, they can replace you with a blonde haired white girl, and it will be like you were never there. What you’ve accomplished, for all of us, will only be real if you stay.’ He compared the importance of her staying to marching in civil rights marches, etc. Well she did stay for the series, the movies, the conventions, all of it. But that wasn’t her biggest contribution to space and space exploration. After the TV series ended, she was approached by NASA. NASA realized they had, to say the least, a bit of diversity issue. With exactly zero black astronauts at the time and the same number of women, they knew they had to change that. And they asked her to be part of an effort to recruit both. The program was a huge success. Among those recruited were Dr. Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, and United States Air Force Colonel Guion Bluford, the first African-American astronaut, as well as Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Ronald McNair, who both flew successful missions during the Space Shuttle program before their deaths in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986. Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison cited Nichols' role of Lieutenant Uhura as her inspiration for becoming an astronaut. Recruits also included Charles Bolden, the former NASA administrator and veteran of four shuttle missions, Frederick D. Gregory, former deputy administrator and a veteran of three shuttle missions and Lori Garver, former deputy administrator. She served from the mid-1980s on the board of governors of the National Space Institute (today's National Space Society), a nonprofit, educational space advocacy organization. So, now you know a bit of why Nichelle wasn’t just an actress, she actually changed the world by being one. And to this day her character is still a vital part of the Star Trek lore with Zoe Saldana playing the character in movies and Celia Rose Gooding playing the character in Star Trek Strange New Worlds, as she says playing Uhura the way Nichelle would have in the 1960's if they had let her. Nichelle Nichols died in 2022.
February is Black History Month, so each week we are going to be featuring an influential African American who has transformed our country or world for the better. When I was looking at this, I wanted to focus on men & women who either spoke to me personally as an ally, who are not as well known as they should be, or who had some connection to what we do. Well we found a great one to start with.  |
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