Hiram Revels

Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first Black member of the United States Congress — elected to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi in 1870, during Reconstruction. He occupied the seat previously held by Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, making his election one of the most symbolically powerful moments in American history. A formerly enslaved people's representative now sat in the chair of the man who had fought a war to keep them in bondage.

Born free in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on September 27, 1827, Revels was of mixed Black and Native American heritage. He attended Knox College in Illinois, became an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and served as a chaplain for Black Union troops during the Civil War. After the war, he settled in Mississippi, where he entered politics.

Revels served in the Senate from February to March 1871, completing the unexpired term. During his brief tenure, he advocated for the rights of Black Mississippians and for amnesty for former Confederates, believing that reconciliation was essential to the nation's healing. After leaving the Senate, he became the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University), the first land-grant college for Black students in America. He joined the ancestors on January 16, 1901.