U.S. Senator Hiram Rhoades Revels
Posted on 02/25/2005 12:16:08 AM PST by mdittmar
1870 African American congressman sworn in
Hiram Rhoades Revels, a Republican from Natchez, Mississippi, is sworn into the U.S. Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in Congress.
During the Civil War, Revels, a college-educated minister, helped form African American army regiments for the Union cause, started a school for freed men, and served as a chaplain for the Union army. Posted to Mississippi, Revels remained in the former Confederate state after the war and entered into Reconstruction-era Southern politics.
In 1867, the first Reconstruction Act was passed by a Republican-dominated U.S. Congress, dividing the South into five military districts and granting suffrage to all male citizens, regardless of race. A politically mobilized African American community joined with white allies in the Southern states to elect the Republican party to power, which in turn brought about radical changes across the South. By 1870, all the former Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union, and most were controlled by the Republican Party, thanks in large part to the support of African American voters.
On January 20, 1870, Hiram R. Revels was elected by the Mississippi legislature to fill the Senate seat once held by Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy. On February 25, two days after Mississippi was granted representation in Congress for the first time since it seceded in 1861, Revels was sworn in.
Although African Americans Republicans never obtained political office in proportion to their overwhelming electoral majority, Revels and some 15 other African American men served in Congress during Reconstruction, more than 600 served in state legislatures, and hundreds of African Americans held local offices.
Mississippi History Ping
How could this be so? Pre-1964 America was irredeemably racist, wasn't it? Revels must have been some sort of a puppet who simply did the bidding for his masters, surely. /Sarcasm off
But..but..how can this be, the Democrats are the party of diversity!
You know, abc,cbs,nbc,the naacp will lead with this story.
Just wanted FR to have it first before the old media shouts it from the rooftops.
weren't there also about 13 black Republicans in the House during the start of Reconstruction?
Let's level the playing field and encourage and elect more Black Republicans to Congress!!!!!!!!!!
Missippy History ping
Ping
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I was not aware of blacks ever being a majority of the electorate in the South. They are 38% in Mississippi now which is the highest in the nation.
I know that in some Caribbean nations that blacks outnumbered whites dramatically as slaves....Haiti and Jamaica come to mind. I believe in Haiti it was 18-1.
Maybe, they are speaking of when many whites were disenfranchised at the time as ex-Rebels. Does anyone here know?
answered my own question by simply doing some research.
There were more blacks in Mississippi in 1850 than whites ....about 15% more I'd reckon. I assume that was still true 20 years later before the northern and western migrations.
Interesting stats.
Hiram Rhoades Revel was GOP.
Time for blacks to come home to GOP.
Some have.
If we're 38% black right now,
then several blacks vote GOP
'cuase MS is the most GOP state
in the union, even besting Utah.
(Dont' ask me for the source/link...
I had it at one time).
I would guess there was a time from 1868-1872 or so when, until larger numbers of ex-Rebs had taken the oath of allegiacne, blacks may have made up a majority of eligible voters in Mississippi or Alabama. But it would have been close. Before the war, there were only 3.2 m. slaves and about 6.4 m. whites, so that would have to be a (Fritz Hollings voice here) "lotta disenfranchisin' goin' on out dere."
I think last election that 87% of whites voted (R) in Mississippi.
Yep, I'd wager maybe 8-10% Mississippi blacks voted (R).
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