Hiram Rhodes Revels (1827-1901)
Hiram Rhodes Revels is buried at Hill Crest Cemetery, Holly Springs, Mississippi. Jesse Belmont Barber writes: “The significance of the name becomes apparent and of considerable importance when we discover that the H.R. Revels who served five years as the assistant pastor of a Presbyterian church [Madison Street, in Baltimore, Maryland] became in 1870 Hiram R. Revels of Mississippi, the first Negro to be chosen a member of the Senate of the United States” (Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: Story of the Work of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (1952), p. 28).
This was H.R. Revels’ maiden speech before Congress.
