History of hiram revels

Hiram Rhodes Revels arrived on Capitol Hill to take his seat as the first Black member of the U.S. Congress in 1870. But first, the Mississippi Republican faced Democrats determined to block him.

The Constitution requires senators to hold citizenship for at least nine years, and they argued Revels had only recently become a citizen with the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment.

Before that, the Supreme Court had ruled in its 1857 Dred Scott decision that Black people weren’t U.S. citizens.

This technicality wasn’t actually their main issue with Revels.

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First black female senator

At the time, the Democrats were the party of white southern men, and they simply didn’t want any Black men in Congress.

In any case, their bad faith legal argument didn’t hold up. Revel’s fellow Republicans argued he was born a free man in the United States and had lived there all his life.

Dred Scottwas a bad decision that should’ve never been made, which the Civil Rights Act and 14th Amendment had sought to redress, t