Escaped slave who became lawmaker will be first individual African American honored with statue at South Carolina State House

Inside a small art studio not far from Atlanta, 67-year-old Basil Watson is shaping history. 

The Jamaican-born artist is creating a sculpture of Robert Smalls, the historic South Carolina lawmaker who escaped slavery in Charleston by commandeering a Confederate ship. Smalls would go on to become a top Union naval officer during the Civil War, and is celebrated as a champion of civil rights and equality. 

"It's an honor to get to put this piece on the state Capitol in South Carolina," Watson said.

His statue of Smalls will be the first monument honoring an individual African American on the State House's grounds. Currently, the statues surrounding the Capitol are all of White men, many with ties to the Civil War or the Jim Crow-era South. 

A bipartisan push from state lawmakers made Smalls' statue a reality. 

"It helps to complete the incomplete and unfinished story," historian John McCardell said.

"Here is someone whose intelligence was recognized almost literally from birth," McCardell said of Smalls. "He was bold and courageous on that night in May of 1862 when he brought his family and others on board, and, almost miraculously, delivered that ship to the Union blockade offshore."

Watson's plans for Smalls' statue depict the icon's journey from illiteracy to a pioneering statesman, using a stack of books as a platform symbolizing Smalls' elevation. The completed sculpture will be about 12 feet tall, Watson said. 

"I will fade into the background, but I want them to remember is Robert Smalls, what he did, and to understand where African Americans are coming from," Watson said.