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BHM100: Celebrating Marshall “Major” Taylor, the 1st Black Champion of Cycling and Worldwide Sports Superstar

BHM100: Celebrating Marshall “Major” Taylor, the 1st Black Champion of Cycling and Worldwide Sports Superstar

By goodblacknews on February 21, 2026

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Founder and Editor-in-Chief

You’ve likely heard of Jack Johnson, the first Black world heavyweight champion boxer and Jesse Owens, the first Black world champion sprinter. But have you ever heard of Marshall “Major” Taylor, the first Black world champion of cycling?

Taylor not only was the first African-American world champion in cycling, he might have been the first internationally known sports celebrity ever.

Born in 1878 in Indianapolis, Taylor was one of eight children and the son of a formerly enslaved Civil War veteran. In his youth, Taylor was given a bicycle by the wealthy family his father Gilbert worked for, and was soon earning money delivering newspapers and riding barefoot for miles a day.

When he wasn’t working his paper route, Taylor mastered several stunts and tricks on his bicycle. To drum up business, Taylor was hired by a local bicycle shop to dress in a military uniform and perform his feats in front of the store – and it worked.

Marshall “Major” Taylor (photo via wikipedia commons)

Taylor was nicknamed “Major” and was soon hired to work for the shop full-time. By the 1890s, America was experiencing a bicycle boom, so shop’s owners also entered Taylor into local cycling races, which he easily won.

Though Taylor was prevented from joining any local riding clubs, he kept competing and winning. When there were “whites only” races, friends would smuggle him in and though he couldn’t officially compete, his times could be measured.

At 17, Taylor knocked two-fifths of a second off the world record held by professional racer Ray MacDonald. Taylor’s time could not be submitted for official recognition, but everyone watching the race knew what they had witnessed. Major Taylor earned a second nickname: “The Black Cyclone.”

Taylor soon became a professional racer and won 29 of the 49 races he entered. By 1899, he won the cycling world championship officially, and the victory earned Taylor widespread fame.

Even so, Taylor remained barred from cycling races in the South. Even when he wasn’t, racist spectators would at times throw ice or nails at him, and several white cyclists would jostle him, shove him or box him in.

Taylor started using his competitors’ hatred as fuel — in order to ensure that he wouldn’t be physically accosted or pulled from his bike, he would ride several lengths ahead and stay there.

At the end of a one-mile race in Massachusetts however, cyclist W.E. Becker, upset he finished behind Taylor, pulled Taylor to the ground after the race. “Becker choked him into a state of insensibility,” the New York Times reported, “and the police were obliged to interfere. It was fully fifteen minutes before Taylor recovered consciousness.” Becker was fined $50 for the assault.

After that, Taylor started competing in Europe, where a Black athlete could ride
without fear of racially-motivated violence. Promoters shifted events from Sundays to accommodate Taylor, who refused to race on the Sabbath. In 1902, Taylor dominated the European Tour, winning the majority of races he entered and cementing his reputation as the fastest cyclist in the world.

Taylor in Paris 1902

Reportedly earning $30,000 a year, Taylor raced consistently for the rest of the decade, making him one of the wealthiest athletes of his day, Black or white. But as the automobile emerged as a more exciting mode of movement, mass interest in cycling began to ebb.

In 1910, 32 year-old Taylor retired, living off his sizable earnings. But by 1929, with the Wall Street crash and some other bad investments, Taylor’s fortune was all but wiped out. He self-published his autobiography, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World in 1929 and spent the last years of his life in Chicago selling it door-to-door. When Taylor died in 1932 at 53, he was buried in a pauper’s grave at the Mount Glenwood Cemetery in Chicago.

When some former racing stars learned of this, they convinced Frank Schwinn, owner of the Schwinn Bicycle Company, to have Taylor’s remains exhumed and transferred to the cemetery’s Memorial Garden of the Good Shepherd and mark it with a bronze tablet that reads: “Worlds champion bicycle racer who came up the hard way —Without hatred in his heart—An honest, courageous and God-fearing, clean-living gentlemanly athlete. A credit to his race who always gave out his best—Gone but not forgotten.”

To learn more about Taylor, check out the 2012 Smithsonian.com article by Gilbert King, the 2024 PBS documentary Major Taylor: Champion of the Race, 2021’s The World’s Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America’s First Black Sports Hero by Michael Kranish, or Major: A Black Athlete, a White Era, and the Fight to Be the World’s Fastest Human Being (2009) by Todd Balf.

Other Sources:

BHM 100: Ona “Oney” Judge – the Enslaved Woman Who Emancipated Herself as George Washington Ate Dinner

BHM 100: Ona “Oney” Judge – the Enslaved Woman Who Emancipated Herself as George Washington Ate Dinner

By goodblacknews on February 16, 2026

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Editor-in-Chief

On Presidents Day, we are honoring someone who was all too familiar with the United States’ first president George Washington — her name was Ona “Oney” Judge.

Judge knew there was no time like dinnertime to make her escape. Enslaved by President George Washington and his wife, Martha, in 1796 Judge secretly booked passage on a boat and left the nation’s then capital, Philadelphia, as the Washingtons ate their supper, determined not to return to their plantation in Mount Vernon and remain enslaved.

Judge hid in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (by then a free state). As president of a nation that just attained its freedom from the British, Washington knew he might face serious criticism and scrutiny if he used a slave catcher to recapture Judge. Instead, he used advertisements and sent emissaries after her three times, but Judge refused to return.

An ad from Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser on May 26, 1796, offering a reward for the return of Ona Judge.

Though she  technically was still a fugitive when Washington died in 1799, she was finally left alone, free and remained “never caught.” On February 25, 2008, Philadelphia celebrated the first “Oney Judge Day” at the President’s House site.

To learn more about Judge, read the 2018 book Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar or the 2020 children’s book Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington’s Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away; Young Readers Edition, also by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, you can watch the Mount Vernon video on Ona Judge.

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MUSIC MONDAY: “A Love Supreme: The Essential John Coltrane Playlist” (LISTEN)

MUSIC MONDAY: “A Love Supreme: The Essential John Coltrane Playlist” (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on February 16, 2026

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Threads: @stlmarlonwest IG: stlmarlonwest Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.socialSpotify: marlonwest)

Happy Music Monday! It’s your monthly Rhythm Broker, Marlon West, back with another sonic adventure.

On this post-Valentine’s and President’s Day Monday, I have been thinking about the legendary musical seeker, John Coltrane. For my second Black History Month offering, I am pleased to share “A Love Supreme: The Essential John Coltrane Playlist.” This collection brings together the essential tracks of one of the 20th century’s most influential musical figures.

While John Coltrane is renowned for the fiery playing that pioneered modal and free jazz — infusing deep spirituality into landmark albums like Giant Steps and A Love Supreme — he also mastered the art of the love song.

This collection includes “Naima,” the 1959 ballad named after his then-wife, Juanita Naima Grubbs, along with standards such as “I Want To Talk About You,” “My One And Only Love,” and “Dedicated To You.”

From his collaborations with Miles Davis to his personal spiritual journey from classic Bebop to the edges of the avant-garde, I have assembled nine hours of John Coltrane’s finest work for you to enjoy.

Please savor the sounds of the man known to fans and fellow musicians alike as “Trane.” I look forward to sharing another collection with you next month.

As always, stay safe, sane, and kind.

Marlon West (photo courtesy Marlon West)
BHM100: Remembering Dred Scott, Harriet Scott and How They Survived One of the Worst Supreme Court Decisions in U.S. History

BHM100: Remembering Dred Scott, Harriet Scott and How They Survived One of the Worst Supreme Court Decisions in U.S. History

By goodblacknews on February 13, 2026

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Editor-in-Chief

On March 6, 1857, United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney oversaw a 7-2 vote against enslaved spouses Dred Scott and Harriet Scott, who had bravely and rightfully petitioned the Court for their freedom.

As agreed to in the Missouri Compromise, if enslaved people worked and lived in free states with or for their owners, this gave the enslaved persons the right to be free.

However, in the majority opinion, Chief Justice Taney stated all people of African descent, free or enslaved, weren’t U.S. citizens and therefore did not have the right to sue in federal court, on top of having the gall to argue that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, as well as the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

This U.S. Supreme Court decision outraged Northern politicians and abolitionists while bolstering Southern politicians and pro-slavery adherents. The debate raged so deeply that it stoked both sides to believe that only war or succession would “solve” the nation’s slavery dilemma.

Though they didn’t obtain their freedom through the justice system, the Scotts were purchased by people who freed them in May of 1857. Dred found work as a porter in a St. Louis hotel until he contracted tuberculosis and died in September 1858.

Harriet continued living in St. Louis, working as a washerwoman to support herself and her daughters. She lived through the Civil War, witnessing the final abolition of slavery, and passed away on June 20, 1876.

In 1997, Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott were posthumously inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

On March 6, 2017, 160 years to the day after that horrible Supreme Court decision, Charlie Taney, the great great grand nephew of Justice Taney, apologized on behalf of his family to Lynne M. Jackson, the great great granddaughter of the Scotts, outside the Maryland State House in front of Roger Taney’s statue.

In August 2017, that same statue of Taney was removed from the entrance of Maryland’s State House. In 2023, a new, nine-foot-tall granite memorial monument for Dred Scott was dedicated at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, MO.

To learn more about Dred Scott, Harriet Robinson Scott and the Dred Scott Decision, check out the PBS video What Was the Dred Scott Decision?, the 2019 book Dred Scott: The Inside Story by David Hardy, 2008’s Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil by Mark A. Graber, and the 2009 book on Harriet Scott called Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier by Lea Vandervelde.

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BHM100*: Celebrating NFL Trailblazer Doug Williams, the 1st Black Quarterback to Win a Super Bowl Championship and Super Bowl MVP

BHM100*: Celebrating NFL Trailblazer Doug Williams, the 1st Black Quarterback to Win a Super Bowl Championship and Super Bowl MVP

By goodblacknews on February 8, 2026

On a January evening in 1988, Doug Williams became first Black quarterback in the National Football League to both start and win a Super Bowl. Williams’ performance leading the Washington Redskins (now Commanders) in Super Bowl XXII remains one of the most significant moments in sports history, a triumph that resonated far beyond the gridiron.

Born August 9, 1955, in Zachary, Louisiana, Williams grew up in an era when the very idea of a Black quarterback leading an NFL team seemed impossible. He honed his skills at Grambling State University from 1974 to 1977, playing under legendary coach Eddie Robinson. At Grambling, Williams passed for over 8,000 yards and 93 touchdowns, leading the Tigers to three Black College National Championships and finishing fourth in Heisman Trophy voting in 1977.

In 1978, Williams made history when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected him 17th overall, making him the first Black quarterback drafted in the first round. Over five seasons with Tampa Bay, he led the team to the playoffs three times, including an NFC Championship Game appearance in 1979.

Despite his success, Williams was significantly underpaid compared to his white counterparts, a disparity he later attributed to racism. After a brief stint in the now-defunct USFL (United States Football League), Williams joined Washington’s team in 1986 as a backup QB. When head coach Joe Gibbs named him the starter for the 1987 playoffs, few could have predicted the historic performance that would follow.

In Super Bowl XXII against the Denver Broncos, Williams delivered one of the greatest quarters in football history, throwing four touchdown passes in the second quarter alone. He finished with 340 passing yards and led his team to a commanding 42-10 victory, earning Super Bowl MVP honors.

When a reporter at Media Day asked Williams, “How long have you been a Black quarterback?” he famously responded, “I’ve been a quarterback since high school, and I’ve been Black all my life.”

Following his historic Super Bowl XXII win, Williams continued playing for Washington through the 1989 season, though injuries limited his playing time in subsequent years. After retiring as a player, Williams transitioned into coaching and personnel roles.

He returned to his alma mater Grambling, serving as head coach (1998-2003, 2011-2013), where he won four Southwestern Athletic Conference championships. In 2010, Williams helped establish the Black College Football Hall of Fame, ensuring that the achievements of HBCU athletes would be properly honored and remembered.

In 2024, Williams was selected as the American Football Coaches Association‘s recipient of the Trailblazer Award as one of the most storied “G-Men” in the history of Grambling State’s program.

After a stint in the NFL as a personnel executive with Tampa Bay, Williams eventually rejoined the Washington franchise in various front office capacities, and currently serves as senior advisor to the Commanders. In a full-circle moment, his son D.J. Williams was named the team’s quarterbacks coach in January 2026.

To learn more about Williams, read The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback by Louis Moore or Black Trailblazers in Sports: Doug Williams by David Lee Morgan, Jr.

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*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.

BHM100*: Celebrating U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Famer and Pioneer Mabel Fairbanks

BHM100*: Celebrating U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Famer and Pioneer Mabel Fairbanks

By goodblacknews on February 7, 2026

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Founder and Editor-in-Chief

Growing up in 1920s New York, Mabel Fairbanks dreamed of becoming a champion figure skater, but was denied entry to ice rinks due to segregation. She learned how to skate in part by eavesdropping on white skating instructors until her local rink manager finally admitted her.

(image via Atoy Wilson and the Mabel Fairbanks estate)

After her professional career on the ice ended, Fairbanks became a figure skating coach and worked with World Champion pairs team Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, Olympic gold medalists Scott Hamilton and Kristi Yamaguchi and Atoy Wilson, the first African American athlete to win a U.S. skating title.

Though she was never able to compete for her own prizes, Fairbanks was recognized as a pioneer of the sport when she became the first African American inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1997. She was posthumously inducted into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in October 2001.

Fairbanks’ resting place at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles is marked by a plaque etched with a pair of figure skates and the words “Skatingly Yours,” the phrase she’d add whenever she signed autographs.

U.S. Figure Skating currently champions The Mabel Fairbanks Skatingly Yours Fund, which financially assists and supports the training and development of promising Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) figure skaters with the goal of helping them realize and achieve their maximum athletic potential. There is also Mabel Fairbanks merchandise available at usskating.org where the proceeds go directly to the Skatingly Yours fund.

To learn more about Fairbanks, check out the NPR Code Switch podcast episodeabout her story and legacy and the 2019 children’s book Ice Breaker: How Mabel Fairbanks Changed Figure Skating (She Made History) written by Rose Viña and illustrated by Claire Almon.

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*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.

BHM100*: Mary Fields aka “Stagecoach Mary” – 1st Black Woman Contracted to Deliver the U.S. Mail

BHM100*: Mary Fields aka “Stagecoach Mary” – 1st Black Woman Contracted to Deliver the U.S. Mail

By goodblacknews on February 6, 2026

Nicknames in the Old West had to be earned, not given. “Stagecoach Mary” was no exception. In 1895, “Stagecoach Mary” Fields became the first Black woman contracted by the postal service to deliver the U.S. mail. With her guns and tough demeanor, Fields unfailingly protected her stagecoach and her mail route from wolves and bandits alike.

Born enslaved in Tennessee in the early 1830s, once Fields was emancipated at the the end of the Civil War, she traveled around working odd jobs until she eventually made her way to a convent in Toledo, Ohio, working as a groundskeeper and game hunter, and eventually moved to Cascade, Montana and did the same at a different convent.

After clashing with several nuns who objected to her smoking, drinking and gun-toting gruffness, Fields accepted a donated stagecoach from a sympathetic Mother Superior and used it to pursue a new line of work in Cascade.

Mary never missed a day in the eight years she had her postal route – when she couldn’t drive her stagecoach through the snow, she would don snowshoes and trek to deliver the mail. After retiring from her postal service, Mary established her own laundry business in town. She died in 1914 and is buried in Cascade.

To learn more about Stagecoach Mary, read Deliverance Mary Fields, First African American Woman Star Route Mail Carrier in the United States: A Montana Historyby Miantae Metcalf McConnell from 2016, the 2019 children’s picture book Fearless Mary: Mary Fields, American Stagecoach Driver written by Tami Charles and illustrated by Claire Almon or African American Women of the Old West by Tricia Wagner on which Mary graces the cover.

You can also listen to the very informative 2021 episode about Mary on the podcast Black Cowboys.

Sources:

*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.

BHM100*: Celebrating Guion “Guy” Bluford, Ron McNair and Frederick Gregory – the 1st African American Astronauts in Space

BHM100*: Celebrating Guion “Guy” Bluford, Ron McNair and Frederick Gregory – the 1st African American Astronauts in Space

By goodblacknews on February 5, 2026

You may have heard of Black astronauts like Mae Jemison, Charles Bolden or Victor Glover, but do you know about the first African-American astronauts or what they contributed to NASA’s space program?

Ronald McNair, Guion “Guy” Bluford and Frederick Gregory (photo via NASA.gov)

Guion “Guy” Bluford, Ron McNair and Frederick Gregory were the first three African-Americans in space. They were also NASA classmates in its famous “Class of 1978” – the first class to train women as astronauts (Sally Ride) as well as the first Asian-American man (Ellison Onizuka).

Guy Bluford graduated from Penn State and joined the Air Force in 1964 to become a pilot. Bluford was deployed to Vietnam and flew over 140 combat missions. After Vietnam, Bluford remained in the Air Force, using his skills to train future fighter pilots. In the 1970s, Bluford earned advanced degrees in aerospace engineering and eventually became chief of the Air Force’s aerospace laboratory.

BHM100*: Celebrating Unsung Civil Rights Champion Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson, 1st and Only Woman Executive Secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

BHM100*: Celebrating Unsung Civil Rights Champion Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson, 1st and Only Woman Executive Secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

By goodblacknews on February 4, 2026

Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson, one of the unsung champions of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, was the only woman to serve as Executive Secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was known for her verve and willingness to take on anything or anyone.

Kwame Ture (fka Stokely Carmichael, one of the original SNCC Freedom Riders) once said of Ruby, “She was convinced that there was nothing that she could not do… she was a tower of strength.”

Ruby was arrested several times and served 100 days in prison, voluntarily adopting SNCC’s “Jail-no-Bail” strategy to keep bail money from further funding racist police departments.

(photo via theamericanblackstory.com)

Ruby participated in multiple sit-ins in Atlanta as part of the Atlanta Student Movement while she attended Spelman College, joined the Freedom Riders, was attacked and beaten in Montgomery, and in Atlanta worked to integrate hospitals after lunch counters were successfully desegregated.

At one hospital demonstration, the receptionist told Ruby and her fellow protestors to leave when they came through the white hospital entrance. “Besides you’re not sick anyway,” the receptionist added. Ruby walked right up to the desk, looked the receptionist in the eye, then vomited on the counter and retorted, “Is that sick enough for you?”

Former SNCC leader and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond remembered that when SNCC staff was preparing to board a plane for Africa in 1964 to observe the success of the nonviolence technique, an airline representative told them the plane was overbooked, they were being bumped and would have to take a later flight. This angered Smith-Robinson so much that without consulting the rest of the group she went and sat down in the jetway and refused to move. (They were given seats on the original flight.)

Smith-Robinson also created the Sojourner Truth Motor Fleet for SNCC to make sure the field staff always had cars available.

(photo via snccdigital.org)

Only one year after Ruby succeeded James Forman as SNCC’s Executive Secretary, she died from cancer at 25 – a devastating loss to her movement colleagues and SNCC itself. On the headstone at her Atlanta grave site are words appropriate for both her life and SNCC: “If you think free, you are free.”

In 2017, Smith-Robinson’s niece Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected Mayor of Atlanta.

To learn more about Ruby, check out her biography Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson (2000) by Cynthia Griggs Fleming or SNCC’s digital profile on her at: https://snccdigital.org/people/ruby-doris-smith-robinson/

*[This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.]

BHM 100*: Meet Robert Smalls, who Escaped Slavery by Commandeering a Confederate Boat, Captained That Same Boat for the Union Navy, and Became the 1st African-American Elected to U.S. Congress

BHM 100*: Meet Robert Smalls, who Escaped Slavery by Commandeering a Confederate Boat, Captained That Same Boat for the Union Navy, and Became the 1st African-American Elected to U.S. Congress

By goodblacknews on February 2, 2026

[*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History” founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.]

Robert Smalls was the first Black man elected to U.S. Congress during Reconstruction, but of course his incredible story and accomplishments did not begin there. Smalls was born into slavey in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina and started his journey to national prominence by daring to escape slavery during the Civil War.

Smalls, like many other enslaved people, was made to work for the Confederate forces. Menial labor such as grave digging, cooking, digging trenches, etc. were the most common jobs, but some enslaved people were used in skilled labor positions. Smalls, who could navigate the waters in and around Charleston, was used to guide transport ships for the Confederate Navy.

On May 13, 1862, Smalls convinced several other enslaved people to help him commandeer a Confederate transport ship, the CSS Planter, in Charleston Harbor. Smalls, in a captain hat and using Confederate hand signals, sailed from Confederate-controlled waters to the U.S. Naval blockade. By doing so, Smalls gained freedom for himself, several other enslaved people and also for his family.

Illus. in: Harper’s Weekly, v. 6, 1862 June 14, p. 372. (via PICRYL Public Domain)

Smalls’ example of cunning and bravery helped convince President Abraham Lincoln to accept Black soldiers into the U.S. Army and Navy. Smalls became Captain of the same boat for the Union Navy and helped free enslaved peoples as he fought and outwitted the Confederate Navy several more times during the duration of the War.

Check out the PBS NewsHour video about this event:

After the South surrendered, Smalls returned to Beaufort, S.C. and purchased his enslaver’s house, which was seized by the Union in 1863. His enslaver sued to get it back, but lost in court to Smalls.

Smalls learned to read and write during this time, and after going into business to service the needs of freedmen, Smalls was elected to the State House of South Carolina. While there, Smalls authored state legislation to provide South Carolina with the first free and compulsory public school system in the United States. He also founded the Republican Party of South Carolina.

In 1874, Smalls was elected the first Black member of U.S. Congress. In backlash to his election, his opposers began gerrymandering across South Carolina to start tilting seats back to white men.

Conservative Southern Bourbon Democrats, who called themselves the Redeemers, also resorted to violence and election fraud to regain control of the South Carolina state legislature. As part of wide-ranging white efforts to reduce African-American political power, Smalls was charged and convicted of taking a bribe five years prior in connection with the awarding of a printing contract.

Smalls was pardoned as part of an agreement by which charges were also dropped against Democrats accused of election fraud. But the scandal took a political toll, and Smalls was defeated by Democrat George D. Tillman in the senate election in 1878, and again, narrowly, in 1880. Smalls successfully contested the 1880 result and regained the seat in 1882.

Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls From Slavery to Congress
In 1884 he was elected to fill a seat in a different district. He was nominated for Senate but defeated by Wade Hampton in 1886. Smalls died of malaria and diabetes in 1915 at the age of 75 and was buried in his family’s plot in the churchyard of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in downtown Beaufort.

According to curators at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smalls’ family went on to be very successful, and there is a Robert Smalls lecture at the University of South Carolina every year.

The monument to Smalls in the churchyard is inscribed with a statement he made to the South Carolina legislature in 1895:

My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.

To learn more about Robert Smalls, check out Be Free or Die by Cate Lineberry or Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls, From Slavery to Congress 1839 to 1915 by Edward A. Miller, Jr.