COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A group studying where to put South Carolina’s first Statehouse monument to an individual African American has decided Robert Smalls’ statue should be staring down a notorious white supremacist. A committee has voted to send its suggestion of the design and placement of the statue to the General Assembly. Smalls would be across from a statue of “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman who as governor worked to dismantle most of the former slave’s work to gain equality in voting and education for African Americans after the Civil War. Smalls led a slaveholder’s ship during the Civil War to sail his family and a dozen others to freedom.
