Today, for Black History Month, we remember Hiram Rhodes Revels who, on this date, February 25, 1870, was sworn into the U.S. Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in Congress. He was a Republican from Mississippi. His cousins were killed participating in John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. During the Civil War, he helped recruit and organize two black Union regiments. When he first arrived at the Senate, southern Democrats refused to let him sit, arguing that the Dred Scott decision, in 1857, ruled that he wasn’t a citizen and had no right to serve, despite the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, which gave him birthright citizenship

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