Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1827Different sources list his birth year as either 1827 or 1822. – January 16, 1901) was an American politician, minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and college administrator. Born free in North Carolina, he later lived and worked in Ohio, where he voted before the Civil War. Elected by the Mississippi legislature to the United States Senate as a Republican to represent Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during the Reconstruction era, he was the first African American to serve in either house of the U.S. Congress.
During the American Civil War, Revels had helped organize two regiments of the United States Colored Troops and served as a chaplain. After serving in the Senate, Revels was appointed as the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University), a historically black college. He served from 1871 to 1873. Later in his life, he served again as a minister.
Early life and education Revels was born free in 1827 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to free people of color, with ancestors who had been free since before the American Revolution.Paul Heinegg, Introduction, Free African Americans in Virginia and North Carolina, Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing, 1995–2005. Quote: James Revell of Cumberland County [NC] entrusted his executor with the task of making application to the legislature for his wife's freedom [WB C:21]....Another member of this family, Hiram Revels, first African American to be elected to the U.S. Senate, was born in Fayetteville, Cumberland County, North Carolina in 1822 [Encyclopædia Britannica, Ready Reference & Index VIII:538]. Two books available online at this website, including supplementary material. His parents were of African American, European, and rumored "Croatan" ancestry. His mother was also specifically known to be of Scots descent. His father was a Baptist preacher.
Revels was a second cousin to Lewis Sheridan Leary, one of the men who was killed taking part in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, and to North Carolina lawyer and politician John S. Leary.Oates, John Alexander. The Story of Fayetteville and the Upper Cape Fear. Dowd Press, 1950. p. 714
During his childhood, Revels's education came from a local free Black woman, despite restrictions at the time on education for free Black children. In 1838, at age 11, he went to live with his older brother, Elias B. Revels, in Lincolnton, North Carolina. He was apprenticed as a barber in his brother's shop. Barbering was considered a respectable, steady trade for black Americans in this period. As men of all races used barbers, the trade provided black Americans an opportunity to establish networks with the white community. After Elias Revels died in 1841, his widow Mary transferred the shop to Hiram Revels before she remarried.
Revels attended the Beech Grove Quaker Seminary, a school in Union County, Indiana, founded by Quakers, and the Union Literary Institute, also known as the Darke County Seminary despite being in Randolph County, Indiana.Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
In 1845, Revels was ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME); he served as a preacher and religious teacher throughout the Midwest: in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, and Kansas. "At times, I met with a great deal of opposition," he later recalled. "I was imprisoned in Missouri in 1854 for preaching the gospel to Negroes, though I was never subjected to violence."Aaseng, Nathan. African-American Religious Leaders: A–Z of African Americans. Infobase Publishing, May 14, 2014. pp. 189–191 During these years, he voted in Ohio.
In the 1850s, he married Phoebe Bass, a free Black woman. He studied religion from 1855 to 1857 at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He became a minister in a Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland, where he also served as a principal of a black high school., Robinson Library, 2011, accessed October 17, 2014
During the American Civil War, Revels served as a chaplain in the United States Army. After the Union authorized establishment of the United States Colored Troops, he helped recruit and organize two black Union regiments in Maryland and Missouri. He took part at the Battle of Vicksburg in Vicksburg, Mississippi.U.S. Senate: Art & History Home > Photo Exhibit at senate.gov
Political career In 1865, Revels left the AME Church, the first independent black denomination in the US, and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was assigned briefly to churches in Leavenworth, Kansas, and New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1866, he was called as a permanent pastor at a church in Natchez, Mississippi, where he settled with his wife and six daughters. He became an elder in the Mississippi District of the Methodist Church, continued his ministerial work, and founded schools for black children.
During Reconstruction, Revels was elected alderman in Natchez in 1868. In 1869 he was elected to represent Adams County in the Mississippi State Senate.
Congressman John R. Lynch later wrote of him in his book on Reconstruction:
Revels was comparatively a new man in the community. He had recently been stationed at Natchez as pastor in charge of the A.M.E. Church, and so far as known he had never voted, had never attended a political meeting, and of course, had never made a political speech. But he was a colored man, and presumed to be a Republican, and believed to be a man of ability and considerably above the average in point of intelligence; just the man, it was thought, the Rev. Noah Buchanan would be willing to vote for.
In January 1870, Revels presented the opening prayer in the state legislature. Lynch wrote of that occasion,
That prayer—one of the most impressive and eloquent prayers that had ever been delivered in the [Mississippi] Senate Chamber—made Revels a United States Senator. He made a profound impression upon all who heard him. It impressed those who heard it that Revels was not only a man of great natural ability but that he was also a man of superior attainments.
Election to Senate
At the time, as in every state, the Mississippi legislature elected U.S. senators; they were not elected by popular vote until after ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913.
In 1870, Revels was elected by a vote of 81 to 15 in the Mississippi legislature to finish the term of one of the state's two seats in the U.S. Senate, which had been left vacant since the Civil War. Previously, it had been held by Albert G. Brown, who withdrew from the U.S. Senate in 1861 when Mississippi seceded.
When Revels arrived in Washington, D.C., Southern Democrats in office opposed seating him in the Senate. For the two days of debate, the Senate galleries were packed with spectators at this historic event."The Colored Member Admitted to His Seat in the Senate", New York Times, February 25, 1870, accessed October 10, 2012 The Democrats based their opposition on the 1857 Dred Scott Decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that people of African ancestry were not and could not be citizens. They argued that no black man was a citizen before the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, and thus Revels could not satisfy the requirement of the Senate for nine years' prior citizenship.
Supporters of Revels made arguments ranging from relatively narrow and technical issues, to fundamental arguments about the meaning of the Civil War. Among the narrower arguments was that Revels was of primarily European ancestry (an "octoroon") and that the Dred Scott decision should be interpreted as applying only to those blacks who were of totally African ancestry. Supporters said that Revels had long been a citizen (as shown by his voting in Ohio) and that he had met the nine-year requirement before the Dred Scott decision changed the rules and held that blacks could not be citizens.Richard Primus (2006), , 119 Harvard Law Review 1680
The more fundamental argument by Revels's supporters was that the Civil War, and the Reconstruction amendments, had overturned Dred Scott. Because of the war and the Amendments, they argued, the subordination of the black race was no longer part of the American constitutional regime and, therefore, it would be unconstitutional to bar Revels on the basis of the pre-Civil War Constitution's citizenship rules. One Republican Senator supporting Revels mocked opponents as still fighting the "last battle-field" of that war.
Senator Charles Sumner (R-Massachusetts) said, "The time has passed for argument. Nothing more need be said. For a long time it has been clear that colored persons must be senators." Sumner, a Republican, later said, All men are created equal, says the great Declaration, and now a great act attests this verity. Today we make the Declaration a reality. ... The Declaration was only half established by Independence. The greatest duty remained behind. In assuring the equal rights of all we complete the work.Congressional Globe, Senate, 41st Cong., 2nd sess. (February 25, 1870): 1567.
On February 25, 1870, Revels, on a party-line vote of 48 to 8, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats voting against, became the first African American to be seated in the United States Senate. Everyone in the galleries stood to see him sworn in.
Sumner's Massachusetts colleague, Henry Wilson, defended Revels's election, and presented as evidence of its validity signatures from the clerks of the Mississippi House of Representatives and Mississippi State Senate, as well as that of Adelbert Ames, the military Governor of Mississippi.Myers 2009, p. 129 Wilson argued that Revels's skin color was not a bar to Senate service, and connected the role of the Senate to Christianity's Golden Rule of doing to others as one would have done to oneself.
U.S. senator
Revels advocated compromise and moderation. He vigorously supported racial equality and worked to reassure his fellow senators about the capability of African Americans. In his maiden speech to the Senate on March 16, 1870, he argued for the reinstatement of the black legislators of the Georgia General Assembly, who had been illegally ousted by white Democratic Party representatives. He said, "I maintain that the past record of my race is a true index of the feelings which today animate them. They aim not to elevate themselves by sacrificing one single interest of their white fellow citizens."Ploski 18.
He served on both the Committee of Education and Labor and the Committee on the District of Columbia. (At the time, Congress administered the District.) Much of the Senate's attention focused on Reconstruction issues. While Radical Republicans called for continued punishment of ex-Confederates, Revels argued for amnesty and a restoration of full citizenship, provided they swore an oath of loyalty to the United States.Revels, Hiram Rhodes. "History, Art & Archives," United States House of Representatives.
Revels's Senate term lasted a little over one year, from February 25, 1870, to March 3, 1871. He quietly and persistently, although for the most part unsuccessfully, worked for equality. He spoke against an amendment proposed by Senator Allen G. Thurman (D-Ohio) to keep the schools of Washington, D.C., segregated and argued for their integration. He nominated a young black man to the United States Military Academy; the youth was subsequently denied admission. Revels successfully championed the cause of black workers who had been barred by their color from working at the Washington Navy Yard.