Thursday, March 26, 2009

The power of Oration

"It is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant."

Everyday is pretty important in a historical frame. Something interesting has always happened on every day a long time ago.

Speech

The above links to the speech of Hiram Rhodes Revels. It is quite extraordinary. It happens to be the first speech given by an African American Senator in the United States Senate. It took place in 1870.

Revels was the first African American to serve anywhere in the US Congress. He filled out the remaining part of a vacated term of Albert Brown, a Democrat from Mississippi. Revels lived for many years as a free black man in Natchez, Mississippi.

It is quite an interesting story of his life and times in the US South in the pre and post Civil War era. It reminds me that not all people in the South are overtly racist, nor were they back then. This is one of those things you never really hear about. Read more about this interesting situation and time specifically in the Congress here.

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