Family,
On February 25, 1870, the United States Army Civil War veteran and Union chaplain Hiram Rhodes Revels was sworn into the U.S. Senate — representing the former Confederate state of Mississippi.
Sen. Revels was the first Black American to serve in either chamber of the U.S. Congress.
His election by the Mississippi legislature marked one of the greatest triumphs of Reconstruction — the Union project to build the democracy that the leaders of the abolitionist movement and the late President Lincoln had envisioned.
After his term in the Senate, Revels served as Mississippi’s secretary of state and the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, now known as Alcorn State University, a historically Black college in Mississippi.
As one of only a dozen Black Americans to have served in the U.S. Senate in our nation’s 247-year history, it is my strong belief that we must teach this history to every American.
That’s why I’ve introduced the African American History Act, to provide resources to help educate more Americans about the richness and complexity of Black history — including the impacts that racism, white supremacy, and the struggle for justice have had on the fabric of America.
If you agree that every American should know the story of Sen. Hiram R. Revels and the countless other heroic figures of Black history, add your name as a citizen cosponsor of my African American History Act today.
If there is one thing that Black history in the United States has taught us, it is that the struggle for justice and equality continues today.
From the triumphs of emancipation and Reconstruction to the brutal oppression of Jim Crow.
From the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act in 2010’s Shelby County v. Holder, our struggle continues to this day.
Let us teach the rich history of Black Americans and the African diaspora. Let us push our government to live up to its highest ideals, in the words of the late Rep. Barbara Jordan, “an America as good as its promise.” Add your name next to mine on the African American History Act today.
We drink from wells of freedom we did not dig ourselves, and for a debt that can never be paid back, it’s up to us to pay it forward.
With love and gratitude,
Cory
