MDAH will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the historic election of Hiram Revels as the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate in a ceremony at the Old Capitol in Jackson on Tuesday, February 11, 2020, at 6 p.m. Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, will deliver the keynote speech for the program. His 1988 book “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877” was a groundbreaking survey of the Reconstruction Era, redefining the role of Hiram Revels and other African American elected officials during the period.
“My lecture will discuss Hiram Revels’s career, before and after his term in the Senate, in the context of Reconstruction as a remarkable effort to create an interracial democracy in this country, and of the history of black officeholding in the United States,” said Foner. Other program participants include MDAH director Katie Blount; Birdon Mitchell Jr., pastor of Zion Chapel A.M.E. Church in Natchez; Felecia M. Nave, president of Alcorn State University; and Pamela D.C. Junior, director of the Two Mississippi Museums—the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. A reception and book signing will take place at 5 p.m. and the program will begin at 6 p.m. The program will take place in the historic House of Representatives Chamber in the Old Capitol Museum.
