In the midst of the Civil War, Robert Smalls overtook a Confederate boat filled with 17 other enslaved people and steered it to freedom. This extraordinary act was the first of many, as Smalls went on to a groundbreaking career of activism and became one of the first African American men elected to Congress. We examine his remarkable life on this final episode of our special Stories of the Civil War and Reconstruction series.

Guests: Kate Masur, associate professor of history at Northwestern University, and Michael B. Moore, CEO and president of the forthcoming International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. Moore is the great-great-grandson of Robert Smalls.