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, and in 1870, North Carolina native Hiram Rhodes Revels became the first Black member of Congress, taking Davis’s seat representing Mississippi.
Revels was born with a free status in 1822 in Fayetteville. 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 January 1901 he died suddenly.
Other related resources:
- Explore the African American Experience from the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
- A Change is Gonna Come, an online exhibit from the N.C. Museum of History
- Images related to civil rights from the State Archives
- Resources related to black history from the State Library
Image from National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.