Hiram Rhodes Revels (1827-1901) was the first African American to serve in the U. S .Senate. Some historians have a problem with this. It was the Reconstruction era and after the Civil War ended the “carpetbaggers” came South to promote black people. In other words, poor Hiram was probably only a figurehead to shove the post Civil War slavery message down the throats of southerners.
Senator Revels Background
Revels only represented Mississippi for two years during the Reconstruction era. He was born in Fayetteville, NC, to a free father who had some white ancestry. His mother came from a background of Scottish families. He was tutored to learn English and read and write. In the late 1830s he took off for Lincolnton, NC, to be with his brother Elias and worked in his brother’s barber shop.
When Elias Revels died in 1841, his widow, in an unusual move, turned over all her inherited assets to Hiram before she remarried. This enabled the young Hiram Revels to take courses at Union County Quaker Seminary in Indiana, then Knox College in Galesburg, IL.
