Hiram Rhodes Revels Hiram Rhodes Revels ( September 27 , 1827 – January 16 , 1901 ) was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church ( AME ) , and a politician . He was the first person of color to serve in the United States Senate , and in the U . S . Congress overall . He represented Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during Reconstruction . During the American Civil War , he helped organize two regiments of the United States Colored Troops and served as a chaplain . Early career . Revels was born a free man in Fayetteville , North Carolina , to free parents of African and European ancestry . He was tutored by a black woman for his early education . In 1838 he went to live with his older brother , Elias B . Revels , in Lincolnton , North Carolina , and was apprenticed as a barber in his brother ' s shop . After Elias Revels died in 1841 , his widow Mary transferred the shop to Hiram before she remarried . Revels attended the Union County Quaker Seminary in Indiana , and studied at a black 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 . He did additional religious studies from 1856 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 for a black high school . As a chaplain in the United States Army , Revels helped recruit and organize two black Union regiments during the Civil War in Maryland and Missouri . He took part at the battle of Vicksburg in Mississippi . Political career . In 1865 , Revels left the AME Church and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church . He was assigned briefly to churches in Leavenworth , Kansas , and New Orleans , Louisiana . In 1866 , he was given a permanent pastorship in Natchez , Mississippi , where he settled with his wife and five daughters , became an elder in the Mississippi District , 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 . As the Congressman John R . Lynch later wrote in his book on Reconstruction : " So far as known he [ Revels ] 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 . " [ Lynch 1913 ] In January 1870 , Revels presented a remarkable opening prayer in the state legislature . Lynch said , " 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 , the state legislature elected U . S . senators from Mississippi . In 1870 Revels was elected by a vote of 81 to 15 in the Mississippi State Senate to finish the term of one of the state ' s two seats in the US Senate , which had been left vacant since the Civil War . Previously , it had been held by Albert G . Brown , who withdrew from the US Senate in 1861 when Mississippi seceded . When Revels arrived in Washington , DC , Southern Democrats 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 for nine years ' prior citizenship . Supporters of Revels made a number of arguments , from the relatively narrow and technical to fundamental arguments about the meaning of the Civil War . Among the narrower arguments was that Revels was of mixed black and white ancestry ( an " octoroon " ) and that the Dred Scott Decision ought to be read to apply only to those blacks who were of totally African ancestry ; supporters also argued that Revels had long been a citizen ( and indeed had voted 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 arguments Revels supporters made boiled down to this idea : that the Civil War , and the Reconstruction Amendments , had overturned Dred Scott . The meaning of the war , and also of the Amendments , was that the subordination of the black race was no longer part of the American constitutional regime , and that therefore , it would be unconstitutional to bar Revels on the basis of the pre - Civil War Constitution ' s racist citizenship rules . One Republican Senator supporting Revels mocked opponents as still fighting the " last battle - field " of the War . On February 25 , 1870 , Revels , on a strict party - line vote of 48 to 8 , with only Republicans voting in favor and only 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 . U . S . Senator . Revels advocated compromise and moderation . He vigorously supported racial equality and worked to reassure senators about the capability of blacks . 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 . " ( Ploski 18 ) . 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 Senate ' s 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 . Revels ' term lasted one year , February 1870 to March 3 , 1871 . He quietly , 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 . 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 African Americans who had been seated in the House of Representatives , prompted a white Congressman , James G . Blaine , 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 levee s on the Mississippi river ( 41st Congress 3rd Session S . 1136 ) . He argued for integration of schools in the District of Columbia . College president . Revels resigned two months before his term expired to accept 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 Mississippi ' s 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 , as a Republican , wrote a letter to Republican 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 . Legacy . Revels ' daughter Susan Revels 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 100 Greatest African Americans .