Hiram Revels

Hiram Revels (1822-1901), American clergyman and educator, the first black to sit in the U.S. Senate. Born September 21, 1822, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, of free parents, Hiram Rhoades Revels moved to Indiana to obtain the education not available to him in the South. He was ordained a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1845 and graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1857. Settling in Baltimore, Maryland, he worked as principal of a school for blacks and as a church pastor. In 1861 Revels helped organize the first two black regiments from Maryland; in 1864 he joined the Union army as a chaplain. Settling in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1866, he entered politics as a Republican conciliatory toward former supporters of the Confederacy. Revels served first as alderman, then as state senator, and finally as U.S. senator from the state of Mississippi, a seat to which he was elected in 1870 to fill an unexpired term. His competence earned him the respect of his congressional colleagues during a 14-month tenure. Later he served as president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, an institution of higher learning for blacks, near Lorman, Mississippi. He died January 16, 1901, in Aberdeen, Mississippi.