In honor of Black History Month, we’re celebrating the innovators and game-changers who &a

In honor of Black History Month, we’re celebrating the innovators and game-changers who ‘disrupted’ our history all month long. Today we honor the legacy of Robert Smalls.

Robert Smalls was an enslaved African-American born into slavery in Beaufort, S.C., who after the American Civil War, became a sea captain and politician. He freed himself, his crew and their families from slavery on May 13, 1862, when he led an uprising aboard a Confederate transport ship, the CSS Planter, in Charleston harbor, and sailed it north to freedom. His feat successfully helped persuade President Abraham Lincoln to accept African-American soldiers into the Union Army. #RootDisruptor #BlackHistory #OurHistory #BlackHistoryMonth #BHM2015