In the Jim Crow era that followed, millions of Black Americans were erased from American political life. But it soon collapsed as the federal government gave up and pulled troops out of the South, leaving Black people at the mercy of vengeful state governments intent on reestablishing white supremacy. Reconstruction was the first attempt to make that world order a reality, and it succeeded remarkably for a few years, as evidenced by the election of leaders like Hiram Revels. In their eagerness to destroy American democracy rather than share it, they showed themselves to be the inheritors of a long tradition of rebellion against a new world order: a genuine, multiracial democracy. 6 did not have Warnock’s name on their lips. The rioters incited by Trump and Republicans to storm the seat of the federal government on Jan. In assuring the equal rights of all we complete the work.” “All men are created equal, says the great Declaration,” he said, but “the Declaration was only half established by Independence. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts spoke up in Revels’ defense. The abuse which had been poured upon him and on his race during the last two days might well have shaken the nerves of any one.” Revels showed no embarrassment whatever, and his demeanor was as dignified as could be expected under the circumstances. “When the Vice-President uttered the words, ‘The Senator elect will now advance and take the oath,’ a pin might have been heard drop,” The Times wrote.
Raphael legacy racial tyranny free#
Revels’ backers argued that he was in fact a lifelong citizen of the United States, because he was born to free Black parents.Īfter more objections and heated debate, the efforts to block Revels’ admission were voted down by the anti-slavery Republicans who dominated the Senate. While the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, effectively negated that ruling, Vickers contended - with a dose of birtherism that would make Donald Trump proud - Revels had therefore only been a citizen for two years. Sandford, Black people could never be citizens. According to the Supreme Court’s 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. George Vickers, a Democrat from Maryland, argued that Revels was ineligible to serve because the Constitution requires a senator to have been an American citizen for at least nine years.
Before Revels could raise his right hand, the objections began raining down. It was a bold and unapologetic statement that Black Americans - Black men, anyway - were the political equals of whites, and were entitled to hold office alongside them.īut the wounds of the Civil War were still fresh, and Southern whites were furious at being forced to share power with the people they had so recently enslaved. Senate seats, both of which had been abandoned several years earlier, when the state seceded. In 1870, the state Legislature chose Revels to fill one of Mississippi’s two U.S. 25, 1870, America’s first Black senator, Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, sat on the floor of the Senate preparing to take his oath of office. But the proximity of those two events - the election of a Black man to the Senate followed hard on by the violent ransacking of the Capitol by an overwhelmingly white mob - rang loudly with echoes of the past.Ī little more than 150 years ago, on the afternoon of Feb. That was the salient political fact, at least before the insurrection began.
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Warnock’s triumph, along with that of Jon Ossoff, who won the other Georgia runoff on that Tuesday night, gave Democrats the Senate majority they lost in 2014, and full control of Congress for the first time in a decade. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, the first Black Democratic senator from the South in the nation’s history. 6 Capitol riot was another momentous event that happened barely 12 hours earlier and hundreds of miles away: the election to the Senate of the Rev.
Lost in the horror and mayhem of the Jan.
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