"Heroes of the Colored Race"

Head-and-shoulders portraits of Blanche Kelso Bruce, Frederick Douglass, and Hiram Rhodes Revels

surrounded by scenes of African American life and portraits of Jno. R. Lynch,

Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, Ulysses S. Grant, Joseph H. Rainey,

Charles E. Nash, John Brown, and Robert Smalls.

Sept. 27, 1827, is frequently listed as the birth date of Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first black man to serve as a U.S. senator (there is still some dispute about the year). He was a Republican. In 1870, during the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War, he was elected to the Senate. He was followed into the Senate in 1874 by another black Republican, Blanche K. Bruce. Though not elected to office, Frederick Douglass was appointed to the position of chargé d'affaires for the Dominican Republic. After two years, he resigned from his ambassadorship over objections to the particulars of U.S. government policy. He was later appointed minister-resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti, a post he held between 1889 and 1891.

Here's a little bit of the early history of Hiram Revels:



He was born in Fayetteville, N.C. He was born free, but even though he was born free, all Blacks in the South, free or slaves, were forbidden to learn to read and write. Revels was secretly taught these basics by a free Black woman. When he was 15, his family moved to Lincolnton, N.C., where Revels worked as a barber. In 1844, he moved to Indiana (a free state) and began studying at Beech Grove Seminary, a Quaker school. At this time Revels became involved with the teachings of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, a significant religious and educational force in the Black community. In 1845, Revels began studying for the ministry in Drake County, Ohio. Later that year, he was ordained as a minister of the AME Church, and made an elder in 1849. Revels, an itinerant preacher, was imprisoned in Missouri in 1854, for preaching the gospel to Negroes. In the early 1850s, Revels married Phoebe A. Bass, and together they raised six daughters. He attended Knox College in Galesburg, IL, and in 1857, he became a minister and became principal of an African American high school in Baltimore, Maryland. When the Civil War started, Revels helped organize Union regiments and recruit soldiers of the first colored regiment in Maryland. He established a school for freedmen in St. Louis, in 1863, and worked with the U.S. Provost Marshall to handle the affairs of ex-slaves. In 1865, Revels joined the Methodist Episcopal (ME) Church, which offered more opportunities for his work in the South. After the Civil War, the Reconstruction Act of 1867 required the Southern states to write new constitutions permitting African Americans to vote and hold public office. This was the Fourteenth Amendment, and on July 28, 1868, African Americans were officially recognized as citizens of the United States. Later that year, Revels was appointed for a term on the Natchez city board of aldermen. During the first session of the Mississippi legislature in January 1868, Revels was asked to open the session with a prayer. According to John R. Lynch, "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." In 1869, Lynch, a Black political figure from Natchez, encouraged him to enter as a candidate for state senator, representing Adams County. Revels accepted the nomination at the Republican caucus in December 1869.

A Thomas Nast cartoon for Harper's Weekly, depicting Jefferson Davis as Iago to Revels' Othello. The caption reads, "For that I do suspect the lusty moor hath leap'd into my seat :

the thought whereof doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards."

Revels arrived in Washington at the end of January 1870, but could not present his credentials until Mississippi was readmitted to the United States on February 23. Senate Republicans sought to swear in Revels immediately afterwards, but Senate Democrats were determined to block the effort. Led by Senator Garrett Davis of Kentucky and Senator Willard Saulsbury of Delaware, the Democrats claimed Revels’s election was null and void, arguing that Mississippi was under military rule and lacked a civil government to confirm his election. Others claimed Revels was not a U.S. citizen until the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868 and was therefore ineligible to become a U.S. Senator. Senate Republicans rallied to his defense. Though Revels would not fill Davis’s seat, the symbolism of a black man’s admission to the Senate after the departure of the former President of the Confederacy was not lost on Radical Republicans. Nevada Senator James Nye underlined the significance of this event: “[Jefferson Davis] went out to establish a government whose cornerstone should be the oppression and perpetual enslavement of a race because their skin differed in color from his,” Nye declared. “Sir, what a magnificent spectacle of retributive justice is witnessed here today! In the 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.” On the afternoon of February 25, the Senate voted 48 to 8 to seat Revels, who subsequently received assignments to the Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee on the District of Columbia.

Richard Primus, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, wrote "The Riddle of Hiram Revels," which examines the debate and constitutional questions raised by his election.

Here's the abstract:

In the year 1870, the United States Senate conducted a three-day debate on the question of whether an African American man was eligible to sit as a senator. The major argument against his eligibility was that he had not been a citizen of the United States for nine years, as is required of Senators under Article I, Section 3. The reasoning was as follows: under Dred Scott v. Sandford, a black man could not be an American citizen. The Fourteenth Amendment rejected Dred Scott and established universal birthright citizenship, but it was ratified only in 1868. Accordingly, as of 1870, the would-be black senator had been a citizen for only two years. The Senate's debate was major national news in its own day but has been completely forgotten in constitutional history. This Article recovers the debate and uses it to shed new light on central questions of constitutional law, including (1) whether the Civil War should be understood as a constitutional regime change or as a less far-reaching reform; (2) the relative roles of Court and Congress in constitutional interpretation; (3) the problems of transitional justice that arise when a racially exclusive constitutional system enfranchises members of another racial group but does so on terms set only by the initial insider group; and (4) the process by which some historical episodes rather than others come to shape our conception of constitutional history.

Those of you with an interest in constitutional law can read the full text here

Here's a fascinating description of the interest Revels' election raised across the U.S.:



For three days, the Senate debated the status of Dred Scott and the qualifications of Hiram Revels. The public was riveted. According to a reporter observing the scene, "[t]here was not an inch of standing or sitting room in the galleries ... and to say that the interest was intense gives but a faint idea of the feeling which prevailed throughout the entire proceeding." On more than one occasion there were outbursts and demonstrations from the spectators and the Vice President had to call for order. Finally, on Friday, February 25, the Senate called the question. Forty-eight senators, all Republicans, voted in favor of administering the oath of office to Hiram Revels. Eight senators, all Democrats, voted against. The Vice President duly called Revels to the front of the chamber to take the oath of office. Hiram Revels, Republican of Mississippi, then and there became a United States senator by swearing to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." One wonders who Revels had in mind as the Constitution's enemies as he stood in the well of the chamber. More subtly, one wonders how to understand the content of his oath. He swore to support and defend the Constitution, but what was the Constitution at the moment when he swore? The preceding debate reflected radical disagreement within the Senate about even the basic fact of what texts the Constitution contained, let alone what the Constitution meant or to what values or vision of government it was committed. At the very least, the Senate was debating the content and meaning of the Constitution when it debated Revels's qualifications. What was the Constitution's position on racial equality, and what was the constitutional significance of the war? The decision to seat Revels was, among other things, a bid to shape authoritative answers to those questions.

When the Vice-President uttered the words, "The Senator elect will now advance and take the oath," a pin might have been heard drop. But as Senator Wilson rose in his seat and stepped to the lounge immediately behind his desk, where Mr. Revels was sitting, to escort that gentleman to the Speaker's desk, the galleries rose to their feet, that they might miss no word or lose no glimpse of what was being enacted below. The ceremony was short. Mr. Revels showed no embarrassment whatever, and his demeanor was as dignified as could be expected under the circumstances. The abuse which had been poured upon him and on his race during the last two days might well have shaken the nerves of any one. The vast throng in the galleries showed no sign of feeling one way or the other, and left very quietly.

Yesterday, Mr. Revels, a colored man, was admitted as United States Senator from the

State of Mississippi, in the place last held by Jefferson Davis. It is little more than nine

years since Jefferson Davis took a formal and somewhat dramatic farewell of the United

States Senate, having resigned his place to assume the Presidency of the Southern

Confederacy, whose cornerstone was proclaimed to be the slavery of the negro race,

and whose first principle of social economy that the capitalist should own the laborer.

The result of that undertaking is that four millions of human beings who were then

slaves, and whom a degraded Supreme Court declared had never been recognized as

having any rights that a white man was bound to respect, are now citizens of the United

States, endowed with all civil and political rights, and one of that race is now installed in

the place which Mr. Davis vacated. Verily, the whirligig of time brings strange revenges.

African slavery has disappeared, and with it the Confederacy, of which it was to be the

cornerstone, and the emancipated slaves have become the cornerstone in the political

reconstruction of the States from the ruin of rebellion.

“Whyfore is this thus?” Can such things be? Is this article in the New York World a forgery, or an optical illusion? Is it possible that the Washington representative of that distinguished Caucasian journal has actually besought an interview with the negro who has been sent to the United States Senate from Mississippi? It would seem so, if we

can trust our eyes; and it would further seem that the correspondent became bewildered

by the fascinating presence—magnetized into a renunciation of the great leading

“principles” of Democracy. He actually visited the Senatorial Simian at the residence of “the colored President of

the Freedman’s bank,” where, although a “social party” was in progress, the

correspondent failed to detect any overpoweringly obnoxious odor. He stood it. His

handkerchief did not envelope the facial promontory wherein dwell the alert olfactories.

He took an inventory of the features of the sable successor of Jeff. Davis, and found

that he had “a decidedly African, but pleasant physiognomy.” He was tickled almost to

death when “the Senator” condescended to sit for five minutes and answered his dismal

questions; and he asked him almost everything except whether the hollow of his foot

made a hole in the ground. He observed his curly hair, and saw in it on disqualification; he noticed that he was

pretty black, and remembered that it was a complexion to be euphemistically referred to

as the rich olive of the South; he made a note of the conspicuous nose, and declared

that he looked “as benignant and philosophical as one could wish”; he took a sketch of

the Senegambian skull and pulpy lips, and discerned therein a sign that “he may flame

out as a raging orator on the Senate floor.”

Primus' footnotes led me to the press coverage of the day. The New York Times headline read, " The Colored Member Admitted to His Seat in the Senate : An Interesting Scene When the Oath was Administered." The article concluded with:Other headlines were blatantly racist . The Cincinnati Daily Enquirer published this headline on Feb. 26, 1870: "The Mississippi Gorilla Admitted to the Senate"The Cincinnati Daily Gazette had this article:Here's another report from The Morning Oregonian, entitled " The Collapse of Democracy ."It's 145 years later, and we now have a black president of the United States who is being portrayed as an ape and a gorilla by modern-day racists. The major political parties may have switched their platforms and constituencies, but the bigotry hasn't stopped.

I don't remember reading anything in school history classes about what was clearly a major news event back in 1870. I only learned about Revels at home, since my parents subscribed to the Journal of Negro Education, as well as to magazines like Ebony and Jet, which were found in most black households. When I was growing up, there were no black history programs in white schools.

In his conclusion, Primus remarks:



Once the war ended, the Constitution picked up more or less where it left off. Yes, black men were now citizens, and Hiram Revels could even sit in the Senate--if he could get elected. But when he journeyed to Washington to take his seat, he would have to travel in separate colored compartments.

The Commission’s new rules, which were set to become effective on November 1, 1961, followed years of anti-segregation demonstrations, perhaps most notably by the Freedom Riders who risked verbal and physical attacks to challenge Jim Crow laws. Although individuals and groups had challenged segregation for decades, the Freedom Rides officially began in May 1961, and were heavily reported by national and international media. Robert Kennedy, who had sought protection for Freedom Riders, asked the Interstate Commerce Commission on May 30 to end bus segregation. In mid-August, the Justice Department urged the Commission to back these plans, and on September 23, the ICC announced the new rules, which prohibited segregation in interstate travel and required interstate buses to post signs reading “Seating aboard this vehicle is without regard to race, color, creed or national origin by order of the Interstate Commerce Commission.” The new rules certainly represented a great victory; however, questions remained over whether transportation officials would actually follow them. Civil rights activists from groups like the NAACP and CORE put enforcement to the test, traveling through many Southern states. They found that some areas were fully compliant with the new rules, while others—especially in Mississippi and Alabama—resisted them.

That of course would not change until segregation in interstate travel was abolished in Sept. 1961 by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) . This happened at the urging of Robert Kennedy, after massive civil rights demonstrations had taken place.It's hard to think of this as "history," since I remember riding on both segregated buses and trains, and sitting in "colored" waiting rooms.

It is easy to forget that after Revels and Bruce, there would not be another black senator until Massachusetts Republican Edward Brooke was elected in 1967. Brooke, were he alive today, would not recognize or condone the depths to which his party has sunk:

During his two terms, Brooke was discussed as a possible Vice President on Richard Nixon’s re-election ticket and then became the first Republican to publicly call for Nixon’s resignation after Watergate. He championed increased public housing, tax-credits for the working poor, fought for desegregation of public schools and uttered one of the first known calls for what is now known as cyber-security on the Senate floor, saying “for computer-caused invasions of privacy there are no laws. Here we must enact legislation to safeguard the constitutional rights of our citizens from cybernetic invasions.

Though modern-day Republicans have attempted to lay claim to history to lure black voters , they fail to realize that black Americans are aware of their Southern Strategy , and the trade that was made a half century ago . My grandparents were Republicans, which I've written about here, and I repeat what I wrote in answer to David Brooks : "The Republican Party is dead. An ugly doppelgänger has risen in its place."

Dangling black faces in front of us—or, more precisely, black politicians who are stand-ins for white bigotry—ain't fooling anyone. Y'all can keep your Ben Carsons, Allen Wests, Herman Cains and Mia Loves. After all, it was white voters in South Carolina who elected Tim Scott.

As I leave Asheville, N.C. today, where I attended a gathering of activists organized by Daily Kos, I'm thinking about how little I actually learned in school about this period of American history. It would have a major impact on shaping the fate of black Americans for decades to come, and still affects us today. North Carolina Moral Mondays leader and NAACP President Rev. William Barber has talked a lot about that history in his framing of our current time period as The Third Reconstruction.

The racist, sexist, xenophobic posturing of modern-day Republicans will hopefully soon be a part of history as well. We hear the sounds of their death knell. Even if it's not in 2016, it won't be too far in the future. It will happen much faster if we mobilize our people to register, and to vote.