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It seems fitting that the last week of Black History Month should include anniversaries of two pivotal points in Natchez history.

On Feb. 25, 1870, Hiram Revels became the first Black American elected to the U.S. Senate.

The election came two days after Mississippi had been readmitted to the Union and was hailed as a watershed event that attested the verity of the declaration that “all men are created equal.”

Revels was a native of North Carolina and was a minister by trade. He worked to educate Black Americans and in 1854 was imprisoned for preaching to the Black community. He helped recruit Black soldiers during the Civil War and moved to Natchez from Baltimore after the war ended. He was elected an alderman before becoming one of 30 African Americans to serve in the Mississippi Legislature during Reconstruction.

He later became the first president of Alcorn State University and taught theology at Rust College. He died in 1901.

Revels’ willingness to serve and efforts to make proactive changes in a country fraught with strife during and after the Civil War remain examples for us today.

And, on Feb. 27, we sadly marked the anniversary of the death of Wharlest Jackson Sr., the treasurer of the Natchez NAACP who was killed by a truck bomb in 1967.

Jackson was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan for accepting a promotion to a whites-only job at the tire manufacturing plant in Natchez. His friend, George Metcalfe, had been seriously injured by a car bomb years earlier for taking a similar promotion.

Jackson’s brutal death was a galvanizing moment in the Civil Rights movement in Natchez. He was young – only 36 at the time – and left behind a then-8-year-old son who still today carries on the fight for justice.

“A lot of people have tried to push my daddy’s death under the rug,” Wharlest Jackson Jr. has said. “We’re still trying to pull it out into the light.”

Jackson is listed as one of 40 martyrs on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, and the fact that his death remains unpunished is a reminder of the failures of our justice system and our society in the past.

Both these men and their histories have lessons to teach us today, if we will listen.