Hiram Revels Takes His U.S. Senate Seat

On February 25, 1870, Hiram Revels was seated in the United States Senate. A story, perhaps apocryphal, has it that when Jefferson Davis left the U.S. Congress, fellow Senator Simon Cameron told him, “I believe, in the name of God, that a Negro some day will come and occupy your seat.” Cameron’s prediction came true, for in 1870 Hiram Rhodes Revels, a native of North Carolina, became the first black member of Congress, taking Davis’s seat representing Mississippi.

Revels was born a free black in 1822 in Fayetteville. The precise location is not known. By 1838, he had moved to Lincolnton. For a few years he worked as a barber’s apprentice for his brother, and after his brother’s death he managed the shop for a time before moving out of North Carolina to pursue other opportunities.

After leaving the Senate in 1871, Revels served as acting secretary of state in Mississippi in 1873 and, from 1876 to 1882, as president of Alcorn Agricultural College. An ordained African Methodist Episcopal minister, Revels preached and lectured widely. While attending a church conference in Aberdeen, Mississippi, in January1901 he died suddenly. He is buried in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

Other related resources:

• The Civil Rights Movement on NCpedia
• Celebrate Black History! from the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources
• A Change is Gonna Come, an online exhbit from the N.C. Museum of History
• A History of African Americans in North Carolina from N.C. Historical Publications
• Images related to civil rights and Henry Frye from the State Archives
• Resources related to black history from the State Library

For more about North Carolina’s history, arts and culture, visit Cultural Resources online. To receive these updates automatically each day, make sure you subscribe by email using the box on the right, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

About these ads