By Tatiana Ponil
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1827 – January 16, 1901) was an American Republican politician, minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and college administrator. Born free in North Carolina, he later lived and worked in Ohio, where he voted before the Civil War. Elected by the Mississippi legislature to the United States Senate as a Republican to represent Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during the Reconstruction era, he was the first African American to serve in either house of the U.S. Congress.
During the American Civil War, Revels had helped organize two regiments of the United States Colored Troops and served as a chaplain. After serving in the Senate, Revels was appointed as the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University), a historically black college. He served from 1871 to 1873. Later in his life, he served again as a minister.
Revels’s daughter, Susie Revels Cayton, edited The Seattle Republican in Seattle, Washington. Among his grandsons were Horace R. Cayton Jr., co-author of Black Metropolis, and Revels Cayton, a labor leader. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hiram Rhodes Revels as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans.
