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Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

On February 25th, 1870, cheers erupted in the Senate Gallery.

People stood to watch the swearing in of a trailblazer, Hiram Rhodes Rebels, a black man

from Mississippi, becoming the first African American to serve in the U.S.

Senate. And what's more, he was taking the seat vacated by Jefferson Davis, who left the

Senate at the start of the Civil War to become president of the Confederacy. It was an incredible

moment in what historians call

biracial democracy in the Deep South. It didn't last. For a brief period immediately after

the Civil War, African Americans in the South participated widely and freely in electoral politics.

They elected candidates into courthouses, state legislatures, and even to Capitol Hill.

At its peak, at least 15 African Americans served in Congress. Some of them were former slaves.

The very first was Hiram Rhodes Rebels. He'd been

born free in North Carolina and was of mixed African and European heritage. Rebels was a

minister who worked as a teacher and a preacher at churches throughout the South and the Midwest. During the

Civil War, he helped recruit

black troops from Maryland and served as their chaplain. He organized schools for newly freed

slaves. After the war, Revels led churches in Mississippi, where his efforts to create educational opportunities for former slaves

attracted the attention of Republican Party officials. Because here's the thing. After the end of the

Civil War, the electorate in a southern state like Mississippi was, suddenly, almost evenly

...