Hiram R. Revels was the first African-American lawmaker
to serve in the United States Congress. Revels was a preacher
and educator in at least nine states before pursuing public
office in Mississippi in 1868. His election to the state
senate in 1869 led to his election as a U.S. Senator by the
Mississippi legislature in January 1870, filling a vacant
seat in the 41st Congress (1869–1871). In his brief time
on Capitol Hill, he was an advocate for Mississippi and
embraced his status as the first Black Member of Congress
by bringing to the Senate Chamber the petitions, concerns,
and needs of the freed people in the South as well as African
Americans throughout the United States.
Hiram Rhodes Revels was born in Fayetteville, North
Carolina, on September 27, 1827. He claimed his ancestors
“as far back as my knowledge extends, were free.” Despite
restrictions in antebellum North Carolina regarding access
to education for most free Black children, Revels was able to
attend a school taught by a free Black woman. He worked
for a few years as a barber and a schoolteacher before
moving north to continue his education in 1844. Revels
enrolled at the Beech Grove Quaker Seminary in Liberty,
Indiana, and at a seminary for Black students in Darke
County, Ohio. He was ordained in the African Methodist
Episcopal (AME) Church and was a pastor in churches in
Richmond and Terre Haute, Indiana. In the early 1850s,
Revels married Phoebe A. Bass, a free Black woman from
Ohio, and they had six daughters.1
Revels traveled throughout the country, carrying out
religious work and educating African Americans in Indiana,
Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Although
Missouri prohibited by law free Black Americans from
living in the state for fear they would foster discontent
among the enslaved population, Revels moved to St. Louis
in 1853 to serve as pastor of an AME Church, noting
that the law was “seldom enforced” in cities. “I sedulously
refrained from doing anything that would incite slaves
to run away from their masters,” he recalled, and instead
focused on religious instruction so that “even slave holders
were tolerant of me.” Despite his cautiousness, Revels was
briefly imprisoned for preaching to the Black community.
He also claimed to have assisted fugitive slaves when living
in free states. In 1854, he accepted a position with the
Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland. He also
worked as the principal of a Black school in Baltimore and
subsequently attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois,
from 1855 to 1857.2
When the Civil War began in 1861, Revels helped recruit
two Black regiments from Maryland. In 1862, he served as
the chaplain for a Black regiment in campaigns in Vicksburg
and Jackson, Mississippi. In 1863, Revels returned to St.
Louis, where he established a freedmen’s school. At the end
of the war, Revels was a minister in Leavenworth, Kansas,
and engaged in similar work in churches in Louisville,
Kentucky, and New Orleans, Louisiana, before settling in
Natchez, Mississippi, in 1866.3
Two years later, in 1868, Revels was appointed as an
alderman on the Natchez city council by the U.S. military
governor, General Adelbert Ames. In 1869, encouraged
to run for office by future Representative John R. Lynch,
Revels won a seat in the Mississippi state senate. The newly
elected state senate was tasked with filling two U.S. Senate
seats—all Senators were elected by the state legislature until
1913. In January 1861, Democrat Albert Gallatin Brown
and future Confederate president Jefferson Davis withdrew
from the Senate when Mississippi seceded from the Union.
The Senate declared both seats vacant on March 14, 1861.
In 1870, as former Confederate states gained readmission to
representation in Congress, the Mississippi state legislature
proposed electing a Black candidate to fill the remainder of
the term due to expire in 1871 and a White candidate for
the other term ending in 1875. As Revels recalled, Black
legislators believed this would “be a weakening blow against
color line prejudice,” while the Democratic minority also
cynically endorsed the plan, hoping a Black Senator would
“seriously damage the Republican Party.” After three days
and seven ballots, on January 20, 1870, the Mississippi
state legislature voted 85 to 15 to elect Revels to Brown’s
former seat—the term ending March 3, 1871. They chose
Ames to fill the seat formerly held by Davis. At the same
time, the legislature elected then-Governor James Lusk
Alcorn to fill the seat held by Revels beginning in the
42nd Congress (1871–1873).4
Revels arrived in Washington, DC, on January 30, but
could not be sworn in as Mississippi had not yet been
formally readmitted to the United States following the
Civil War. On February 5, he met with President Ulysses
S. Grant in the White House. Revels observed proceedings
in the Senate, occasionally sitting in the gallery and joining
his Republican colleagues on the floor. When Congress
approved the bill to readmit Mississippi on February 23,
the Senate began three days of debate regarding Revels’s
credentials for the seat. Senator Willard Saulsbury Sr. of
Delaware questioned the legitimacy of the Mississippi state
legislature that chose Revels. Others, such as George Vickers
of Maryland and Garrett Davis of Kentucky, focused on
questions regarding Revels’s status as a citizen, attempting
to make a constitutional argument undermining his claim
to the seat. Both pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1857
decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which declared those
of African descent to be ineligible for citizenship. Even
though the 1868 ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment
had conferred citizenship on African Americans, Revels’s
opponents argued that the Dred Scott ruling meant
that any prospective Black Senator in 1870 lacked the
constitutionally required nine years as a citizen to hold a
seat in the Senate.5
Senate Republicans rallied to his defense. John Sherman
of Ohio stated that Revels had voted in Ohio before the
Civil War. “He was always a citizen,” Sherman declared,
and added that the Dred Scott decision was “a denial of the
truth of history” and should be ignored. Though Revels
would not fill Davis’s seat, Nevada Senator James Warren
Nye called the prospect of a Black Senator representing the
former Confederate president’s home state “a magnificent
spectacle of retributive justice.” On the afternoon of
February 25, the Senate voted along party lines 48 to 8 to
seat Revels. He received assignments to the Committee on
Education and Labor and the Committee on the District
of Columbia.6
Revels entered the Senate as a figure of national renown.
He estimated that he received 10 times the interview
requests of his Senate colleagues. So many meeting
invitations were delivered to him in the Senate Chamber
that he had to instruct the doorkeepers to stop accepting the
cards of interested parties. He recalled, however, welcoming
inquiries from African Americans when possible. When
a group of Black mechanics from Baltimore sought his
assistance to counter discriminatory hiring practices at the
city’s U.S. Navy Yard in 1871, Revels successfully appealed
to the U.S. War Department on their behalf.7
Revels embraced his fame by engaging in an extended
speaking tour throughout 1870, traveling widely to address
crowds in Massachusetts, New York, Indiana, Illinois, and
elsewhere. In July, he spoke to the graduating class at Avery
College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was given the
honorary title of doctor of divinity.8
When Revels arrived on Capitol Hill, a reporter asked
him if, as the first Black Member of Congress, he could act “impartially” and serve the interests of White and Black citizens of Mississippi. Revels insisted he was “a representative
of the State, irrespective of color.” But Revels also felt the
weight of his place in history and in the Senate Chamber he
acknowledged his status as “the recognized representative of
my downtrodden people,” and often spoke as an advocate for
civil and political rights for all Black Americans.9
During his first weeks in office, Revels introduced several
petitions, including one conveying the sentiments of the
Mississippi state legislature, which requested that Congress
urgently remove the “political disabilities” prohibiting
many residents of the state from holding office because
of their participation in the rebellion. Petitions also came
from other states. He introduced a petition from a group
of Black citizens from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who
called on the Senate to pass a federal civil rights bill. And on
March 11, Revels presented a petition from Black members
of the Georgia legislature. They had been elected following
the creation of a new, reconstructed state government,
but in September 1868, Democrats expelled them from
the legislature, arguing that the state constitution did not
permit Black officeholders. Georgia’s Black state legislators
appealed to Congress to settle this dispute and pass
legislation that would return them to office. Otherwise,
they wrote, “violence and bloodshed will mark the course of
such elections, and a fair expression of the will of the people
cannot be had.”10
On March 16, before a packed Senate Chamber and
a gallery filled with Black men and women eager to hear
him speak, Revels defended the Black legislators in Georgia
who had sought Congress’s help. With his remarks, Revels
became the first Black Senator to deliver a speech in
American history. Revels acknowledged and celebrated
his unique status, noting that he was ready to give voice
to “feelings which perhaps never before entered into the
experience of any member of this body.” Revels insisted that
the Black lawmakers needed protection in Georgia, as recent
events had resulted in “a distinction as to race and color, so
far as civil and political rights are concerned.” The federal
government owed Black Americans “a deep obligation” for
their loyalty and service during the war. “Many of my race,”
he reminded his colleagues, “sleep in the countless graves of
the South.” Ignoring the pleas of the Black state legislators
would validate the restrictions imposed upon African
Americans in Georgia and undermine democracy in the
state. Revels called on Congress to reinstate the legislators
who were duly elected and reject attempts to force the
state to hold an election before the end of the year. While
Congress heeded Revels’s call to return the Black Georgia
legislators to their seats, their terms were not extended, and
Democrats soon took control of the state.11
Revels balanced his uncompromising stance on the
political rights of Black Americans in the South with
a sincere commitment to amnesty for those citizens of
Mississippi who had fought against the Union and who had
been stripped of certain rights as punishment. “If you can
find one man in the South who gives evidence that he is a
loyal man,” Revels declared, and “has ceased to denounce
the laws of Congress as unconstitutional, has ceased to
oppose them, and respects them and favors the carrying of
them out, I am in favor of removing his disabilities.” Revels
hoped this gesture of goodwill would promote a spirit of
reconciliation in his state.12
Revels’s appeals for unity were part of a larger vision of
recovery and improvement for Mississippi. In December
1870, he introduced a bill to appropriate $2 million for
the construction of levees to protect the land between the
Mississippi and Yazoo rivers in the western part of the
state. A month later, Revels spoke in the Senate Chamber
to convey the need for federal funding. The damage to
Mississippi during “our long internecine struggle” had
ceded significant shares of the market for cotton to global
competitors, particularly Egypt, Brazil, and India. Despite
the emergence of these rivals, Revels said, the “prodigal hand
of nature” had endowed the western Mississippi lands and
large tracts of other southern states with clear advantages
in fertile, arable acreage—if properly managed. Revels
cited contemporary statistics demonstrating that levees
increase the cotton yield to make his case. He stressed that
the “building of the levees on the Mississippi is a national
work,” as cotton production was inextricable from the
national interest and an invaluable part of manufacturing
in the United States and abroad. Federal investment, Revels
added, would help the South “reign supreme as the ruler
and master of the cotton markets of the world.”13
In his final Senate speech, Revels defended legislation
to prohibit discrimination in District of Columbia
schools based on “race, color, or previous condition
of servitude.” Opponents, such as Ohio Senator Allen
Granberry Thurman, warned that enrolling Black and
White children in the same schools would result in “forced
mingling” imposed by a “tyrannical” federal government. Revels pointed to the experience of northern states such as Massachusetts where, he said, “mixed schools” existed
without fundamentally transforming social relations.
For Revels, racial discrimination—be it imposed by state
and local governments, school boards, or even railroad
companies—perpetuated and strengthened prejudice
throughout the nation. He referred to his personal
experience of attempting to circumvent segregated railcars
during a family journey in Kansas to demonstrate the
profound ways discriminatory rules and statutes affected
Black Americans. Revels believed that if policymakers
no longer had the ability to establish and enforce such
prejudice, “the people will soon forget.”14
After the expiration of his Senate term on March 3,
1871, Revels declined several patronage positions offered
by President Grant at the recommendation of Senators
Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton of Indiana and
Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. Instead, Revels returned
to Mississippi when he was appointed the first president
of Alcorn University, named for his political ally Governor
Alcorn. Located in Rodney, Mississippi, Alcorn University
was the first land-grant school for Black students in the
United States. Revels took a leave of absence for about eight
months in 1873 to serve as Mississippi’s secretary of state
after the sudden death of James Lynch. The election of
Mississippi Governor Adelbert Ames in 1874 led to Revels’s
resignation as president of Alcorn University. Revels was
a close ally of Alcorn and Ames wanted to choose a new
appointee. Revels moved to Holly Springs, Mississippi, to
work as a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church,
which he had joined in 1868. He also taught theology at
Shaw University, which was later renamed Rust College.15
In 1875, Mississippi held simultaneous elections for
Congress and for state and local offices. The Democratic
Party used violence and intimidation to keep Republicans
from the polls and picked up four of Mississippi’s six House
seats as well as numerous state and local offices. Four days
after the election, Revels wrote a letter to President Grant
that offered startlingly direct criticism of the Republican
Party in Mississippi, accusing a faction of White Republicans
of disregarding the needs of Black citizens. Revels described
the many Black supporters of the Republican Party as
“enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers” whose only
goal was “to secure power for themselves and perpetuate it.”
He hoped that the Democratic victory in 1875 would
encourage like-minded reformers to lead Republicans to
victory in 1876. Although he was careful to emphasize that
he remained committed to the Republican Party, the nuance
of Revels’s arguments were not apparent to all. One critic
called him an “apostate to his race” and another accused
him of being “bought and paid for by the enemy.”16
Revels later clarified his position, emphasizing that
his “every sentiment, utterance and action in a political
direction, has been strictly Republican” and that he
continued “to work and pray against the success of the
Democrat party.” Nevertheless, his letter to President
Grant was hailed by some in the press as evidence of a fair
Democratic victory in the state and used by Mississippi
Democrats to justify their claims of Republican corruption.
In March 1876, when Revels appeared as a witness before
a U.S. Senate select committee investigating the well-documented
fraud and violence in the 1875 Mississippi
elections, his testimony seemed to support Democratic
claims, despite overwhelming testimony to the contrary.
Revels told the committee that, to the best of his
knowledge, conditions had been relatively peaceful and he
was unaware of any widespread violence.17
Revels never sought other elected office. In July 1876,
he was appointed to his former position as president of
Alcorn University. He resigned in 1883 and returned
to Holly Springs to serve as the district presiding elder
for the Methodist Episcopal Church. In February 1900,
Senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts introduced a
resolution to pay Revels about $4,800—the salary he would
have received had he served a full term in the 41st Congress.
On January 16, 1901, Revels died from complications of
a stroke he experienced while at a church conference in
Aberdeen, Mississippi. The Senate did not vote on Hoar’s
resolution before the end of the 56th Congress (1899–1901) and the resolution failed.18
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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