Part of a series on the contributions of African-Americans with Hoosier ties.

Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first African-American to serve in the U.S. Congress.

Revels, who represented Mississippi in the Senate during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, had received part of his education at the Beech Grove Quaker Seminary in Liberty, Ind., about 1844.

And according to a government Web site about black Americans in Congress, Revels’ first pastorate probably was in Richmond, Ind.

One of his brothers, Willis R. Revels, also was an AME minister and became the first pastor of Bethel AME Church, which moved to Plainfield in 1879.

After the Civil War, Hiram Revels served in churches in Kansas, Kentucky and Louisiana before settling with his family in Natchez, Miss.

The state’s two U.S. Senate seats were vacant, and Revels was chosen to fill one of them.

When Revels arrived in Washington in January 1870, some Democrats tried to block him, saying he had not been a U.S. citizen long enough because African-Americans were not considered citizens until the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1868.

However, the Senate voted 48-8 to seat Revels.

He served until 1871 and died after a stroke in 1901.