CFA Magazine Feature: Conversation
Artists Joel Christian Gill (CFA’04) and Charles Suggs (CFA’20) discuss using their work to tell lesser-known stories from Black history
Originally published in the Fall 2020 issue of CFA magazine. Edited By Mara Sassoon. Photos by Hannah Rose
In the wee hours of May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, an enslaved Black man, stole the Confederate ship the CSS
Planter. It was the middle of the Civil War, and Smalls, one of the
Planter’s eight enslaved crew members, steered the ship away from a dock in Charleston, S.C., after its white captain, pilot, and engineer disembarked for the night. Donning the captain’s hat as a disguise, Smalls picked up his family and the families of other crew members and sailed out of Confederate waters and into freedom.