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[[image - black and white photograph of Senator Edward Brooke]]
[[caption]] The symbol of a new Republican Party is Massachusetts Sen. Edward R. Brooke, First Negro in the high chamber since Reconstruction, he was elected with overwhelming white support (less than three per cent of the electorate of Massachusetts is Negro). [[/caption]]

[[image - black and white photograph of Hiram Rhoades Revels]]
[[caption]] Hiram Rhoades Revels [[/caption]]

FIRST SENATOR
Hiram Revels (1822-1901) was the first black American to serve as a U.S. senator. Born in North Carolina and educated by Quakers in Indiana, he was a Methodist Episcopal Church minister prior to the Civil War. During the war, he helped organize the first black regiment raised in Maryland. Subsequently, he returned to the Deep South where he helped organize churches and schools for the freedmen and became involved in Reconstruction politics. He was appointed U.S. senator from Mississippi after Sen. Jefferson Davis was impeached in 1870.

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