Signal Boost 2 - Hiram Rhodes Revels, 1827-1901; U.S. Senator from 1870-1871

As I have mentioned in prior posts, this project is more about personal accountability to do the work to learn more about people of color, Jewish people, and movements for social justice and to do so in a manner that seeks to amplify/signal boost those people and those voices. To that end, I've created a static webpage - Signal Boost Supplement - Better Sources than Me. I will try to update this page with resources I come across.

Now onto Signal Boost 2 (again, my primary source is Black Americans in Congress 1870-2007, please check it out as it has much more vibrant information):

Hiram Rhodes Revels, 1927 -1901, served as a United States Senator from 1870 to 1871. He was a Republican from Mississippi (most of the first Black people to serve in office were Republicans, because the Republican party was the party that lead the charge to end the enslavement of human beings).

Personal Quick Facts: 

• Born Fayetteville, North Carolina, September 27, 1827; 
• Parents were not enslaved and he claimed his ancestors, "as far back as my knowledge extends, were free). 
• Father - Baptist preacher; Mother of Scottish Decent.
• Scottish background, African and Croatan Indian lineage
• Went to a school taught by a free black woman and worked for a few years as a barber. 
• Complete his education at Beech Grove Quaker Seminary in Liberty Indiana, 
• The Darke County Seminary for black students in Ohio; 
• Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois (he was one of the few college-educated black men of the time). 
• Ordained in African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church; 
• Married to Phoebe A. Bass, a free black woman, and had six daughters.
• While preaching at an AME church in St. Louis, he was imprisoned for preaching to the black community (It was illegal for free blacks to live in Missouri). 
• In 1862, when the Civil War broke out, he helped recruit two black regiments and served as a chaplain. 
• In 1863 he established a freedom school in St. Louis, Missouri. 
• He settled in Natchez Mississippi in 1866.
• He died of a stroke on January 16, 1901,

Political Quick Facts

• Elected as Natchez alderman in 1868; 
• 1869 won a seat in the Mississippi state senate (Revels was one of more than 30 Black legislators out of 140 state legislators. As of 2017, there are 51 Black Legislators, 38 in the House and 13 in the Senate.) 
• Revels was chosen by the legislature in a vote that was 85 to 15 to fill the one year term for Senator (that was the remaining amount on a vacated seat before election);
• Senate Democrats sought to prevent Revels from being sworn in citing, inter alia, that Revels was not a U.S. Citizen until the 14th Amendment in 1868 and therefore ineligible to become a U.S. Senator. 
• Quote from Nevada Senator James Nye:

What a magnificent spectacle of retributive justice is witnessed here today! In place of that proud defiant man who marched out to trample under foot the Constitution and the laws of the country  he had sworn to support, comes back one of that humble race whom he would have enslaved forever to take and occupy his seat upon this floor.

• Served on the Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee on the District of Columbia 
• Argued before the House that the North and the Republican Party owed Georgian Black Legislators their support (Georgians elected 29 black legislators to its house and 3 to its senate and Democrats and moderate Republicans attempted to block their ability to be seated, claiming that the state constitution did no permit black officeholders. The Georgia legislature eventually agreed to a congressional mandate reinstating the legislators as a requirement for rejoining the Union. 
• Advocated against legal separation of the races, believing it led to animosity.
• In early 1871, successfully appealed to the War Department on behalf of Black mechanics from Baltimore who were barred from working at the U.S. Navy Yard. 

Additional Important Information learned while writing this blog: 

From Smart Politics, African-American US Representatives by the Numbers - By Dr. Eric Ostermeier August 28, 2013

• As of August 2013, 25 states have yet to elect an African-American to the U.S. House and 49 percent of the total number of U.S. House elections won by blacks in history have come from five states: New York, California, Illinois, Michigan, and Georgia.
• The percentage of House seats won by African-Americans has increased during each subsequent 10-year redistricting period culminating with the 43 black U.S. Representatives (9.8 percent) who have been elected to serve in the U.S. House for the 113th Congress (although two did not serve: Jesse Jackson, who resigned, and Tim Scott, who was appointed to the U.S. Senate). 
• States that have never elected an African American to the U.S. House are spread out across all four regions of the country (regions as designated by the U.S. Census Bureau):

  · Five states in the Midwest: Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota

  
  

  · Five states in the Northeast: Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont

  
  

  · Four states in the South: Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, and West Virginia.

  
  

  · Eleven states in the West: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

• States that have elected the largest number of Black Representatives:

                  Maryland

                  South Carolina (most of these were Republican, which makes me wonder if it was post-Reconstruction) 

                  Florida

                  Georgia

• The only Republicans to serve in the 20th or 21st Centuries were Oscar De Priest of Illinois, Gary Franks of Connecticut, Tim Scott of South Carolina, J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, and Allen West of Florida.