Revels, Hiram Rhoades

September 1, 1822
January 16, 1901

Politician Hiram Rhoades Revels was the first black man to sit in the U.S. Senate, where he completed the unexpired term of Jefferson Davis. Revels was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina. His parents, who were free blacks, sent him to an elementary school run by a black woman. Moving north, Revels studied at several seminaries in Indiana and Ohio. He then became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and pastored congregations in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, and Maryland. In 1854 Revels left the AME Church after the congregation where he was pastor in St. Louis was divided by squabbling. He joined the ministry of the Presbyterian Church and was posted to Baltimore, where he worked until the outbreak of the Civil War.

Once hostilities commenced, Revels helped organize the first black regiments in Maryland and Missouri. Leaving the Presbyterian Church, he went south; reunited with the AME Church, Revels became active in Republican politics, serving on the city council of Natchez, Mississippi, briefly as a state senator, and in 1870–1871 replacing Jefferson Davis in the U.S. Senate.

Compared to other AME ministers who entered Reconstruction politics, Revels was rather lackluster. During his tenure in the Senate, Revels delivered a few speeches, but none of the legislation he introduced was passed. After his term expired, he returned to Mississippi, left the AME Church, and became a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church (North). After he left the Senate, Revels served as president of Alcorn University, Mississippi State College for Negroes.

See also African Methodist Episcopal Church; Politics in the United States; Presbyterians

Bibliography

Walker, Clarence E. A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.

Wharton, Vernon Lane. The Negro in Mississippi, 1865–1890. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1984.

clarence e. walker (1996)