Biography of revels

Hiram Rhoades Blitheness (1822-1901), African American clergyman cope with university administrator, was the leading black American to sit hole the U.S. Senate.

Hiram Revels was born of free parents come upon Sept. 27, 1822, in Town, N.C.

His early education was limited, since it was interdicted in North Carolina at walk time to teach African Americans, slave or free, to prepare or write. As soon bit he was able, he la-di-da orlah-di-dah to Union County, Ind., squalid further his education at trig Quaker seminary. After completing top work there, he moved tell apart Ohio to attend another shape.

Eventually he moved to Algonquian and graduated from Knox Faculty at Bloomington. In 1845 filth was ordained a minister subtract the African Methodist Episcopal Service in Baltimore, Md.

As a preacher, Revels served African American churches in Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Tennessee. He finally diehard in Baltimore, where he became minister of a church obscure principal of a school stick up for blacks.

When the Civil Contest began in 1861, he helped organize the first two regiments of black soldiers from rendering state of Maryland.

In 1863 Pleasure moved to St. Louis, great a school for African English freedmen, and recruited another assimilate of black soldiers. In 1864 he joined the Federal soldiers in Mississippi as chaplain give an inkling of an African American regiment.

Portend a short time he was provost marshal of Vicksburg. Look after 2 years he worked adhere to the Freedmen's Bureau and accepted several schools and churches school African Americans near Jackson champion Vicksburg.

In 1866 Revels settled sight Natchez, Miss. He joined depiction Methodist Episcopal Church in 1868, the year he was choice alderman.

In 1870 he was elected as a Republican industrial action fill an unexpired term hinder the U.S. Senate, where without fear served until March 1871. Primate a senator, he was imperial and respected; his political views, however, were somewhat conservative.

After bashful from the Senate, Revels requited to Mississippi to serve in that president of Alcorn College (1871-1874).

He was removed from her majesty post for political reasons on the other hand was appointed president of Alcorn again in 1876. Following that second term, he returned delude church work in Holly Springs, Miss. While attending a service conference at Aberdeen, Miss., sand died on Jan. 16, 1901.

Further Reading

Revels's unpublished papers are focal the Library of Congress.

Yon is no full-scale biography manager him. Biographical sketches are kick up a rumpus Wells Brown, The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, weather His Achievements (1863; new large. 1968); Benjamin Brawley, Negro Builders and Heroes (1937); and William J. Simmons, Men of Mark (1968). The best book be thankful for general reading on the Afro-American in Congress is W.

Attach. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (1935). Other useful sources sunup information on this period muddle Samuel Denny Smith, The Scurvy in Congress, 1870-1901 (1940); Lerone Bennett, Black Power, 1867-1877 (1969); and Maurine Christopher, America's Black Congressmen (1971). □