IPPH

We don't need to look far to learn from our history.

Michael Steele uncovers what we can learn from Dr. King’s message in 1963 and how young people are crucial to building a new America.

▶️ Watch the full discussion: https://youtu.be/RCuSOUXVMhg?si=OG4yXxJDPcpNjovY

On March 31, 1888, Frederick Douglass stood before the International Council of Women to deliver an address. This is some of what he said.

Sowande Tichawonna reenacts the abolitionist's speech, which was delivered in front of suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Washington, D.C.

▶️ Watch the full speech: https://youtu.be/O0ehgRObsuU?si=3plN8Bi5SxWNvTAp

He was born enslaved. He stole a Confederate warship. Then he went to Congress.

Robert Smalls was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina. Hired out to work on the docks of Charleston, he learned to pilot boats and developed an intimate knowledge of the harbor and its defenses.

When the Civil War broke out, he was forced to work aboard the CSS Planter, an armed Confederate transport ship carrying guns and ammunition. He spent months studying the harbor and learning the checkpoints.

The Planter’s white officers occasionally left the ship overnight, in violation of Confederate regulations. On May 13, 1862, at just 23 years old, he donned the captain’s hat, gave the correct signals at each checkpoint, and sailed the ship past five Confederate forts to the Union blockade, delivering 17 enslaved people, including his wife and children, to freedom.

The Confederates put a $4,000 bounty on his head. He traveled to Washington and helped persuade Lincoln to allow Black men to serve in the Union Army. He was said to have recruited 5,000 soldiers himself.

After the war, he used his compensation from the Planter to buy the Beaufort home of his former enslaver. He was elected to Congress. Both his victories were contested due to voter intimidation, but he served anyway.