The First Black Man Elected to Congress Was Nearly Blocked From Taking His SeatOver the next decade, 15 more Black men would take their seats in the House and Senate as Reconstruction allowed a radical, if brief, transformation of government. Hiram Rhodes Revels arrived on Capitol Hill to take his seat as the first Black member of the U.S. Congress in 1870. But first, the Mississippi Republican faced Democrats determined to block him. The Constitution requires senators to hold citizenship for at least nine years, and they argued Revels had only recently become a citizen with the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. Before that, the Supreme Court had ruled in its 1857 Dred Scott decision that Black people weren’t U.S. citizens. This technicality wasn’t actually their main issue with Revels. At the time, the Democrats were the party of white southern men, and they simply didn’t want any Black men in Congress. (READ MORE)(SOURCE: BLACKAMERICAWEB.COM)
