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Speaker 1: Hello, Welcome to this day in history class, where we

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Speaker 1: flipped through the book of history and bring you a

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Speaker 1: new page every day. Today is February. The day was

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Speaker 1: February seventy. Hiram Rhodes Rebels, a Republican from Mississippi, took

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Speaker 1: his oath of office in the Senate Chamber. That day.

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Speaker 1: Rebels became the first African American to serve in the

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Speaker 1: US Congress. A New York Times article released that same

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Speaker 1: day reported the following Mr. Revels, the colored Senator from Mississippi,

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Speaker 1: was sworn in and admitted to his seat this afternoon

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Speaker 1: at four forty o'clock. There was not an inch of

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Speaker 1: standing or sitting room in the galleries, so densely were

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Speaker 1: they packed. And to say that the interest was intense,

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Speaker 1: give just but a faint idea of the feeling which

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Speaker 1: prevailed throughout the entire proceeding. Not everybody in attendance was

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Speaker 1: in favor of Rebel's achievement. Hiram was born to free

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Speaker 1: parents in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in eighteen seven. Early on,

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Speaker 1: he went to a school taught by a free black woman,

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Speaker 1: then traveled north, where it was not illegal for him

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Speaker 1: to get an education. Rebels became a minister of the

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Speaker 1: African Methodist Episcopal Church, and he moved around the country

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Speaker 1: preaching and educating black people, and from there he racked

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Speaker 1: up a list of accomplishments. He became the principle of

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Speaker 1: a black school in Baltimore. He helped recruit regiments of

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Speaker 1: African American soldiers from Maryland during the Civil War, and

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Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty three he started a school in St. Louis,

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Speaker 1: Missouri for free black people. After the Civil War ended

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Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five, the United States entered a period

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Speaker 1: known as reconstruction. President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation

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Speaker 1: Proclamation to free slaves in the South, and the South

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Speaker 1: had to be rebuilt. But many states were passing so

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Speaker 1: called black codes, which restricted the freedom of black people

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Speaker 1: and attempted to maintain the old social order. But radical

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Speaker 1: Republicans demanded civil rights for people who were free from slavery,

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Speaker 1: and they pursued more aggressive measures to improve the status

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Speaker 1: of black people in the United States. African Americans began

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Speaker 1: winning elections to state legislatures, gaining political power, and the

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Speaker 1: fourteenth and fifteenth Amendments to the U s Constitution were

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Speaker 1: passed in the late eighteen sixties, giving the formerly enslaved

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Speaker 1: citizenship and equal protection of the laws, and granting black

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Speaker 1: men the right to vote. It was during this climate

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Speaker 1: when reb B entered politics. His leadership caught people's eye,

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Speaker 1: and he won his first elected position as an alderman

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Speaker 1: in Natchez, Mississippi, in eighteen sixty eight. Then in eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty nine he got a seat in the Mississippi State Senate.

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Speaker 1: Rebels was moderate, eager not to upset racial tensions further,

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Speaker 1: and he was a skilled orator, so in eighteen seventy,

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Speaker 1: when the Mississippi State Legislature was looking to put a

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Speaker 1: black man in a vacant U S Senate seat, they

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Speaker 1: voted eighty five to fifteen for Rebels. Mississippi has seceded

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Speaker 1: from the Union in eighteen sixty one, but it was

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Speaker 1: readmitted on February eighteen seventy, and Rebels was set to

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Speaker 1: be sworn in immediately after. But Senate democrats objected. Some

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Speaker 1: said he hadn't been a citizen long enough to be

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Speaker 1: a senator, as black people had only been granted citizenship

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Speaker 1: a couple of years before. Others said Mississippi didn't have

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Speaker 1: a civil government to confirm his election, but his supporters

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Speaker 1: came to his defense. Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner said in

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Speaker 1: a speech on February the time has passed for argument.

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Speaker 1: Nothing more need be said. I doubt if anything more

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Speaker 1: can be said in the way of argument. For a

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Speaker 1: long time, it has been clear that colored persons must

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Speaker 1: be senators, and I have often so declared, And the

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Speaker 1: Senate voted forty eight to eight to seat Rebels. During

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Speaker 1: his term, Revels supported legislation that would allow disenfranchised former

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Speaker 1: Confederates to vote and hold office. He rejected segregation, but

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Speaker 1: didn't advocate for the mixing of races, and he worked

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Speaker 1: to it it's black civil rights Rebels served until the

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Speaker 1: expiration of his Senate term on March third, eighteen seventy one.

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Speaker 1: Sixteen African Americans served in Congress during reconstruction, which ended

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Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy seven. The first black woman wasn't elected

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Speaker 1: to Congress until nearly a century later, when Shirley Chisholm

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Speaker 1: began her first term in the U. S. House of

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Speaker 1: Representatives in nineteen sixty nine. I'm ave Jeffcote and hopefully

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Speaker 1: you know a little more about history today than you

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Speaker 1: did yesterday. You can learn more about history by following

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Speaker 1: us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. At t d i

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Speaker 1: h C podcast, We'll see you tomorrow. Two