Person

Hiram Revels

First African American to serve in the United States Senate, representing Mississippi during the Reconstruction era. A freeborn minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church who rose to prominence in Mississippi politics, he was elected by the state legislature in 1870 to fill one of Mississippi's two U.S. Senate seats, vacant since the Civil War, and later advocated for civil rights, education, and racial reconciliation, including school desegregation in Washington, DC.