Episode 2 of 2

Senate Seating

When: 1870-02-25
Where: Washington, D.C., the conventional meeting place of the United States Senate
Part of: Hiram Revels sworn in as first African American US Senator

Revels was seated in the U.S. Senate on February 25, 1870, becoming the first African American member of Congress.

The Senate voted 48 to 8 to seat Revels, with Republicans in favor and Democrats against. This party-line vote confirmed his status as the first African American to serve in either house of the U.S. Congress.

Sources

Hiram R. Revels Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-04

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.