{"id":61907,"date":"2021-10-21T15:07:54","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T15:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=61907"},"modified":"2021-10-21T15:16:25","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T15:16:25","slug":"sc-senators-reply-all-disrupts-unveiling-of-black-reconstruction-lawmakers-portrait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=61907","title":{"rendered":"SC senator\u2019s \u2018reply all\u2019 disrupts unveiling of Black Reconstruction lawmaker\u2019s portrait"},"content":{"rendered":"

SC senator\u2019s \u2018reply all\u2019 disrupts unveiling of Black Reconstruction lawmaker\u2019s portrait<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The State<\/a>
Columbia, South Carolina
2021-10-16<\/p>\n

Caitlin Byrd<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
This image shows the portrait of Stephen Swails<\/a>, which now hangs in the state Senate chambers. This image was attached to the email sent to state lawmakers on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2021.<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CHARLESTON, S.C.<\/a>\u2014In South Carolina<\/a>, a state with a painful legacy of racism, a white lawmaker on Thursday fired off an email that casually challenged the complexion of a Black Reconstruction-era<\/a> lawmaker, whose portrait now hangs in a place of honor inside the State House<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And, thanks to the modern-day perils of the reply-all email, now all 46 of South Carolina\u2019s state senators, their staff and the senate clerk, know what Charleston<\/a> Republican Sandy Senn<\/a> thought when she saw the portrait of Stephen Atkins Swails<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat sure is the whitest looking black guy I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d the senator from Charleston wrote in a message that included an emoji<\/a> symbol [🤷‍♂️] of a person shrugging…<\/p>\n

…Swails was born in Pennsylvania<\/a> to a Black father and a white mother in 1832, and made his way to South Carolina first as a military man.<\/p>\n

He stormed Fort Wagner on Morris Island<\/a> as a member of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment<\/a>, one of the nation\u2019s first Black fighting units whose story would later be immortalized in the film \u201cGlory<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1865, he became the first commissioned African American officer in the Union Army<\/a>. After his military service, Swails stayed in the Palmetto State<\/a>, where he worked for the Freedmen\u2019s Bureau<\/a> to help newly freed slaves in the South<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In South Carolina, a state with a painful legacy of racism, a white lawmaker on Thursday fired off an email that casually challenged the complexion of a Black Reconstruction-era lawmaker, whose portrait now hangs in a place of honor inside the State House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,8,26,20],"tags":[32151,8757,32155,32156,32154,32153,1449,26162,32152,14228],"class_list":["post-61907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-caitlin-byrd","tag-charleston","tag-gerald-malloy","tag-jeff-gossett","tag-marlon-kimpson","tag-sandy-senn","tag-south-carolina","tag-stephen-atkins-swails","tag-stephen-swails","tag-the-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61907"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61910,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61907\/revisions\/61910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}