United States Senator alderman
Which position did Hiram Rhodes Revels hold from Feb 1870 to Mar 1871?
Hiram Rhodes Revels Hiram Rhodes Revels ( September 27 , 1827 – January 16 , 1901 ) was an American politician , minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church , and a college administrator . Born free in North Carolina , he later lived and worked in Ohio , where he voted before the Civil War . Elected by the Mississippi legislature to the United States Senate as a Republican to represent Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during the Reconstruction era , he was the first African American to serve in either house of the U.S . Congress . During the American Civil War , Revels had helped organize two regiments of the United States Colored Troops and served as a chaplain . After serving in the Senate , Revels was appointed as the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College ( now Alcorn State University ) , a historically black college . He served from 1871 to 1873 and 1876 to 1882 . Later in his life , he served again as a minister . Early life and education . Revels was born free in 1822 in Fayetteville , North Carolina , to free people of color , with ancestors who had been free since before the American Revolution . His parents were of African American , European , and Native American ancestry . His mother was also specifically known to be of Scots descent . His father was a Baptist preacher . Revels was a second cousin to Lewis Sheridan Leary , one of the men who was killed taking part in John Browns raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 , and to North Carolina lawyer and politician John S . Leary . During his childhood , Revels was taught by a local black woman for his early education . In 1838 at the age of 11 , he went to live with his older brother , Elias B . Revels , in Lincolnton , North Carolina . He was apprenticed as a barber in his brothers shop . Barbering was considered a respectable , steady trade for black Americans in this period . As men of all races used barbers , the trade provided black Americans an opportunity to establish networks with the white community . After Elias Revels died in 1841 , his widow Mary transferred the shop to Hiram Revels before she remarried . Revels attended the Beech Grove Quaker Seminary , a school in Union County , Indiana founded by Quakers , and Darke County Seminary in Ohio . In 1845 , Revels was ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church ( AME ) ; he served as a preacher and religious teacher throughout the Midwest : in Indiana , Illinois , Ohio , Tennessee , Missouri , and Kansas . At times , I met with a great deal of opposition , he later recalled . I was imprisoned in Missouri in 1854 for preaching the gospel to Negroes , though I was never subjected to violence . During these years , he voted in Ohio . He studied religion from 1855 to 1857 at Knox College in Galesburg , Illinois . He became a minister in a Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore , Maryland , where he also served as a principal of a black high school . During the American Civil War , Revels served as a chaplain in the United States Army . After the Union authorized establishment of the United States Colored Troops , he helped recruit and organize two black Union regiments in Maryland and Missouri . He took part at the Battle of Vicksburg in Vicksburg , Mississippi . Political career . In 1865 , Revels left the AME Church , the first independent black denomination in the US , and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church . He was assigned briefly to churches in Leavenworth , Kansas , and New Orleans , Louisiana . In 1866 , he was called as a permanent pastor at a church in Natchez , Mississippi , where he settled with his wife and five daughters . He became an elder in the Mississippi District of the Methodist Church , continued his ministerial work , and founded schools for black children . During Reconstruction , Revels was elected alderman in Natchez in 1868 . In 1869 he was elected to represent Adams County in the Mississippi State Senate . Congressman John R . Lynch later wrote of him in his book on Reconstruction : Revels was comparatively a new man in the community . He had recently been stationed at Natchez as pastor in charge of the A.M.E . Church , and so far as known he had never voted , had never attended a political meeting , and of course , had never made a political speech . But he was a colored man , and presumed to be a Republican , and believed to be a man of ability and considerably above the average in point of intelligence ; just the man , it was thought , the Rev . Noah Buchanan would be willing to vote for . In January 1870 , Revels presented the opening prayer in the state legislature . Lynch wrote of that occasion , That prayer—one of the most impressive and eloquent prayers that had ever been delivered in the [ Mississippi ] Senate Chamber—made Revels a United States Senator . He made a profound impression upon all who heard him . It impressed those who heard it that Revels was not only a man of great natural ability but that he was also a man of superior attainments . Election to Senate . At the time , as in every state , the Mississippi legislature elected U.S . senators ; they were not elected by popular vote until after ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913 . In 1870 , Revels was elected by a vote of 81 to 15 in the Mississippi legislature to finish the term of one of the states two seats in the U.S . Senate , which had been left vacant since the Civil War . Previously , it had been held by Albert G . Brown , who withdrew from the U.S . Senate in 1861 when Mississippi seceded . When Revels arrived in Washington , D.C. , Southern Democrats in office opposed seating him in the Senate . For the two days of debate , the Senate galleries were packed with spectators at this historic event . The Democrats based their opposition on the 1857 Dred Scott Decision by the U.S . Supreme Court , which ruled that people of African ancestry were not and could not be citizens . They argued that no black man was a citizen before the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 , and thus Revels could not satisfy the requirement of the Senate for nine years prior citizenship . Supporters of Revels made arguments ranging from relatively narrow and technical issues , to fundamental arguments about the meaning of the Civil War . Among the narrower arguments was that Revels was of primarily European ancestry ( an octoroon ) and that the Dred Scott decision should be interpreted as applying only to those blacks who were of totally African ancestry . Supporters said that Revels had long been a citizen ( as shown by his voting in Ohio ) and that he had met the nine-year requirement before the Dred Scott decision changed the rules and held that blacks could not be citizens . The more fundamental argument by Revels supporters was that the Civil War , and the Reconstruction amendments , had overturned Dred Scott . Because of the war and the Amendments , they argued , the subordination of the black race was no longer part of the American constitutional regime and , therefore , it would be unconstitutional to bar Revels on the basis of the pre-Civil War Constitutions citizenship rules . One Republican Senator supporting Revels mocked opponents as still fighting the last battle-field of that war . U.S . Senator Charles Sumner ( R-Massachusetts ) said , The time has passed for argument . Nothing more need be said . For a long time it has been clear that colored persons must be senators . Sumner , a Republican , later said , All men are created equal , says the great Declaration , and now a great act attests this verity . Today we make the Declaration a reality . .. . The Declaration was only half established by Independence . The greatest duty remained behind . In assuring the equal rights of all we complete the work . On February 25 , 1870 , Revels , on a party-line vote of 48 to 8 , with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats voting against , became the first African American to be seated in the United States Senate . Everyone in the galleries stood to see him sworn in . Sumners Massachusetts colleague , Henry Wilson , defended Revelss election , and presented as evidence of its validity signatures from the clerks of the Mississippi House of Representatives and Mississippi State Senate , as well as that of Adelbert Ames , the military Governor of Mississippi . Wilson argued that Revelss skin color was not a bar to Senate service , and connected the role of the Senate to Christianitys Golden Rule of doing to others as one would have done to oneself . U.S . Senator . Revels advocated compromise and moderation . He vigorously supported racial equality and worked to reassure his fellow senators about the capability of African Americans . In his maiden speech to the Senate on March 16 , 1870 , he argued for the reinstatement of the black legislators of the Georgia General Assembly , who had been illegally ousted by white Democratic Party representatives . He said , I maintain that the past record of my race is a true index of the feelings which today animate them . They aim not to elevate themselves by sacrificing one single interest of their white fellow citizens . He served on both the Committee of Education and Labor and the Committee on the District of Columbia . ( At the time , the Congress administered the District. ) Much of the Senates attention focused on Reconstruction issues . While Radical Republicans called for continued punishment of ex-Confederates , Revels argued for amnesty and a restoration of full citizenship , provided they swore an oath of loyalty to the United States . Revelss Senate term lasted a little over one year , February 25 , 1870 to March 3 , 1871 . He quietly and persistently—although for the most part unsuccessfully—worked for equality . He spoke against an amendment proposed by Senator Allen G . Thurman ( D-Ohio ) to keep the schools of Washington , D.C. , segregated and argued for their integration . He nominated a young black man to the United States Military Academy ; the youth was subsequently denied admission . Revels successfully championed the cause of black workers who had been barred by their color from working at the Washington Navy Yard . The Northern press praised Revels for his oratorical abilities . His conduct in the Senate , along with that of the other black Americans who had been seated in the House of Representatives , prompted a white Congressman , James G . Blaine ( R-Maine ) , to write in his memoir , The colored men who took their seats in both Senate and House were as a rule studious , earnest , ambitious men , whose public conduct would be honorable to any race . Revels supported bills to invest in developing infrastructure in Mississippi : to grant lands and right of way to aid the construction of the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad ( 41st Congress 2nd Session S . 712 ) , and levees on the Mississippi River ( 41st Congress 3rd Session S . 1136 ) . College president . Revels accepted in 1871 , after his term as U.S . Senator expired , appointment as the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College ( now Alcorn State University ) , a historically black college located in Claiborne County , Mississippi . He taught philosophy as well . In 1873 , Revels took a leave of absence from Alcorn to serve as Mississippis secretary of state ad interim . He was dismissed from Alcorn in 1874 when he campaigned against the reelection of Governor of Mississippi Adelbert Ames . He was reappointed in 1876 by the new Democratic administration and served until his retirement in 1882 . On November 6 , 1875 , Revels wrote a letter to fellow Republican and President Ulysses S . Grant that was widely reprinted . Revels denounced Ames and the carpetbaggers for manipulating the black vote for personal benefit , and for keeping alive wartime hatreds : Since reconstruction , the masses of my people have been , as it were , enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers , who , caring nothing for country , were willing to stoop to anything no matter how infamous , to secure power to themselves , and perpetuate it . .. . . My people have been told by these schemers , when men have been placed on the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest , that they must vote for them ; that the salvation of the party depended upon it ; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican . This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people . .. . The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife has , in my opinion , been obliterated in this state , except perhaps in some localities , and would have long since been entirely obliterated , were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive the bitterness of the past , and inculcate a hatred between the races , in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office , and its emoluments , to control my people , the effect of which is to degrade them . Revels remained active as a Methodist Episcopal minister in Holly Springs , Mississippi and became an elder in the Upper Mississippi District . For a time , he served as editor of the Southwestern Christian Advocate , the newspaper of the Methodist Church . He taught theology at Shaw College ( now Rust College ) , a historically black college founded in 1866 in Holly Springs . Hiram Revels died on January 16 , 1901 , while attending a church conference in Aberdeen , Mississippi . He was buried at the Hillcrest Cemetery in Holly Springs , Mississippi . Legacy . Revelss daughter Susie Revels Cayton edited a newspaper in Seattle , Washington . Among his grandsons were Horace R . Cayton Jr. , co-author of Black Metropolis , and Revels Cayton , a labor leader . In 2002 , scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hiram Rhodes Revels as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans .