Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in Congress.

Hiram Rhodes Revels was an American 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.