BLACK HISTORY SPOTLIGHT: HIRAM REVELS

HIRAM REVELS (1822-1901) was the first black U.S. senator.

Born free in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Revels was the son of a free father of mixed heritage and a black mother who was later emancipated. Since all blacks were forbidden from learning to read and write, Revels was secretly taught by a black woman.

When he was 15, his family moved to Lincolnton, North Carolina, where he worked as a barber in his brother’s shop. In 1844, he moved to Indiana and began studying at Beech Grove Seminary, a Quaker school. It was during this time that Revels became involved with the teachings of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, a significant religious and educational force in the black community. The following year, Revels began studying for the ministry in Drake County, Ohio. He was ordained a minister of the AME Church later that year and was an elder in 1849.

In the early 1850s, Revels married Phoeba A. Bass, and they raised six daughters. Revels began preaching in several states, and he later recalled, “At times, I met with a great deal of opposition. I was imprisoned in Missouri in 1854 for preaching the gospel to Negroes, though I was never subjected to violence.” He attended KnoxCollege in Galesburg, Illinois, and in 1857, he became principal of a private school in Baltimore, Maryland.

When the Civil War began, Revels helped organized Union regiments and recruit soldiers of the first black regiment in Maryland. He established a school for freedmen in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1863 and worked with the U.S. Provost Marshall to handle the affairs of former slaves. In 1865, Revels joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, which offered more opportunities for his work in the South. He and his family settled in Natchez, Mississippi, where he founded schools for black children. Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction Act of 1867 required Southern states to write new constitutions permitting blacks to vote and hold public office. They ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, and on July 28, 1868, blacks were officially recognized as citizens of the United States.

Later that year, Revels was appointed for a term on the Natchez City Board of Aldermen. During the first session of the Mississippi Legislature in January 1868, Revels was asked to open the session with prayer. According to John R. Lynch, a black political figure from Natchez, “That prayer— one of the most impressive and eloquent prayers that had ever been delivered in the 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.” The following year, Lynch encouraged Revels to enter as a candidate for state senator, representing Adams County. Revels accepted the nomination at the Republican Caucus in December 1869.

In January 1870, the Mississippi Legislature elected Revels as a U.S. Senator 81 to 15 to fill the last year of the unexpired term of one of the state’s two senators. Revels’ election was met with opposition from Southern Democrats who cited the DRED SCOTT DECISION which was considered by many to have been a central cause of the Civil War. They argued that no black man was a citizen prior to the 14th Amendment’s ratification, and that since election to the Senate required nine years’ prior citizenship, Revels claimed he could not be seated, having been a citizen by law for only two. Supporters of Revels countered that the Dred Scott Decision only applied to blacks who were of pure African blood; Revels was of black and white ancestry. They said he was therefore exempt and had been a citizen all his life. The New York Herald predicted Revels would never be allowed to take his Senate seat, but he was seated on February 25, 1870, and he held office until March 3, 1871, becoming the first black U.S. senator. During his short tenure, he introduced several bills, presented a number of petitions and served on the Committee on the District of Columbia and the Committee on Education. After his term in the Senate, Revels became president of Alcorn College from 1871 until 1873.

Revels took a leave of absence from Alcorn to serve as Mississippi’s interim Secretary of State. He reentered the ministry as the pastor of the Holly Springs, Mississippi ME Church. On Nov. 6, 1875, Revels wrote a letter to President Ulysses S. Grant denouncing Mississippi Governor Adelbert Ames and the CARPETBAGGERS for manipulating the black vote for personal benefit and for keeping wartime hatreds alive:

Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been, as it were, enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for country, were willing to stoop to anything no matter how infamous, to secure power to themselves, and perpetuate it….. My people have been told by these schemers, when men have been placed on the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest, that they must vote for them; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people…. The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife has, in my opinion, been obliterated in this state, except perhaps in some localities, and would have long since been entirely obliterated, were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive the bitterness of the past, and inculcate a hatred between the races, in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office, and its emoluments, to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them.

In 1876, Revels returned to Alcorn and served there until his retirement in 1882. For a while, he served as editor of the Southwestern Christian Advocate and taught theology at Shaw College, now known as Rust College. Revels died January 16, 1901, of astroke while attending a church conference.