Hiram Revels (September 27, 1827 - January 16, 1901)

Born a free black in Fayetteville, North Carolina, 1827, Hiram Revels Revels is one of only six African Americans ever to have served in the United States Senate. In 1838 he went to live with his brother, Elias B. Revels, in Lincolnton, North Carolina, and was apprenticed as a barber in his brother's shop. Elias Revels died in 1841 and his widow Mary turned over her assets to Hiram before she remarried. Revels attended the Union County Quaker Seminary in Indiana and from 1856 to 1857 he attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He also studied at a black seminary in Ohio. Revels was ordained a minister in 1845. As a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Revels preached in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas and Maryland in the 1850s. He first worked as a barber and as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. During the Civil War he helped recruit two regiments of African American troops in Maryland and served as the chaplain of a black regiment. After the war he moved to Natchez, Mississippi, where he was elected an alderman in 1868 and a Republican state senator in 1870. Later in 1870 Revels was elected as the first African American member of the United States Senate. A few senators objected, arguing that Revels had not been a U.S. citizen for the nine years, a requirement for serving in the Senate (African Americans had only technically become citizens four years earlier after the passage of the 1866 Civil Rights Act). But this ploy to keep him out of the Senate failed; the Senate voted 48 to 8 in favor of Revels. Revels served as senator from February 25, 1870, to March 4, 1871. (His term was an abbreviated one because he was elected to complete the term vacated ten years earlier by Jefferson Davis who left the Senate to become the president of the Confederacy). Revels resigned two months before his term expired and was appointed the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University) located in Claiborne County, Mississippi. Revels remained active in his ministry. He died on January 16, 1901, while attending a church conference in Aberdeen, Mississippi.