Hiram Revels

When Hiram Revels joined the U.S. Senate on February 25, 1870, he became the first African American to serve in Congress. Born in freedom, Revels was a clergyman and educator who settled in Mississippi after the Civil War. In 1869, he won election to the state legislature, where one of that body’s first orders of business was to fill the two U.S. Senate seats vacated when Mississippi seceded from the Union in 1861.

Elected by his colleagues to complete the Senate term that would expire in March 1871, Revels (a Republican) traveled to Washington, D.C., in January 1870 to claim his seat. Senate Democrats tried to bar his admission, but those efforts ultimately failed. During his brief tenure—Revels did not seek reelection—he voiced principled opposition to the continued segregation of Washington’s schools. Yet he also supported amnesty for former Confederates willing to pledge their loyalty to the United States.