CUMMINGS AND SMALLS

Late Congressman, Elijah Cummings, my Bison brother, has observed that he went from a sharecroppers’ son to Congress in one generation. So too have others even more dramatically than Elijah’s example! Robert Smalls of South Carolina went from being an enslaved ship pilot in Charleston, to ship liberator and family liberator of himself and of eight other enslaved crewmen families. These brave men, before dawn one day, had sailed that stolen battle ship, “The Planter”, that Robert Smalls piloted, in 1862, past 4 Confederate forts’ guns and mines in Charleston harbor, safely, secretly, to the Union fleet that was blockading Charleston out at sea, shocking the Union rescuers as much as they later had shocked the rebels . Smalls was later promoted to be the captain, of the “Planter” and used his knowledge of tides and waterways to help the North defeat the South there. Smalls later became the shipowner, when Congress granted him payment ; he was elected to the U. S. Congress during Reconstruction, where he served with others, like himself , who had “in the same generation” gone from from slavery to the U. S. Congress. God is a powerful captain!