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Hiram Revels
Senator from Mississippi; first African American
senator
Born:
September 27, 1827
Birthplace:
Fayetteville, N.C.
Born a free black, Revels worked as a barber and as a minister in the
African Methodist Episcopal Church. During the Civil War he helped recruit
two regiments of African American troops in Maryland and served as the
chaplain of a black regiment. After the war he moved to Natchez, Miss.,
where he was elected an alderman (1868) and a Republican state senator
(1870). In 1870 Revels was elected as the first African American member of
the United States Senate. A few senators objected, arguing that Revels had
not been a U.S. citizen for the nine years, a requirement for serving in
the Senate--African Americans had only technically become citizens four
years earlier, after the passage of the 1866 Civil Rights Act. But this
ploy to keep him out of the Senate failed--the Senate voted 48 to 8 in
favor of Revels. Revels served as senator from Feb. 25, 1870, to March 4,
1871. (His term was an abbreviated one because he was elected to complete
the term vacated ten years earlier by Jefferson Davis, who left the Senate
to become the president of the Confederacy.) After the Senate, Revels
served as the president of a black college and returned to the
ministry.
Died:
Jan. 16, 1901
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