Now onto Signal Boost 4 (again, my primary source is Black Americans in Congress 1870-2007, please check it out as it has much more vibrant information):
Joseph Hayne Rainey is one of those interesting complex people. He was born enslaved. His father was a barber and the person who enslaved him "allowed" him to work for wages, so long as he paid some of the wages back. He was able to buy his family's freedom in the early 1840s, and approximately a decade later, enslaved two males for his family.
Rainey served for the Confederate Army in 1861, escaping to Bermuda, a British colony that abolished the practice of enslaving human beings in 1834. He stayed there through the Civil War, returning to Charleston in 1866, with enough wealth acquired in Bermuda to "elevate his status in the community."
Quick Facts About his Political Life:
- 1868 - participated in the South Carolina constitutional convention as a representative of Georgetown.
- 1869 Attended a state labor commission.
- 1869 - Official census taker.
- 1870 - Won a seat to the state senate, immediately becoming a chairman of the finance committee.
- 1870 - Appointed to fill the seat left vacant due to Rep. Benjamin F. Whitemore's resignation amidst a scandal about getting paid for appointments to U.S. military academies.
- 1870 Won the full term by 63% and later by 86%.
- Was unopposed for the 43rd Congress.
- 1872 -Ran a race against another Black candidate (Samuel Lee), winning by 52%, his opponent challenged the result because some people spelled Rainey's last name incorrectly.
- Won the seat in the 45th Congress against Democrat John S. Richardson by 52%. Richardson accused the Rainey and the Republicans of voter intimidation because of the presence of federal troops during the election.
- March 3, 1879 - Rainey retired from the House, after being defeated by John S. Richardson, a Democrat by more than 8,000 votes.
Highlighted Parts of his political career:
- 1871, in his first major speech, argued for the use of federal troops to protect Southern Blacks from the recently organized Ku Klux Klan. After the act passed, he had to argue for it to actually get funded.
- He favored desegregating schools, but also favored a poll tax for schools, which many at the time thought would exclude people recently emancipated from enslavement.
- He was the first Black American to preside of the House of Representatives (as a Speaker pro term in April or May of 1874).
- Generally opposed restricting the influx of Asian immigrants to the U.S.
- After a July 4. 1876 tragedy where black militia celebrated by parading through the streets in Hamburg, South Carolina and white men fired upon them, killing several militiamen, Rainey condemned the murders and exchanged coarse remarks with Democratic Representative Samuel Cox of New York who had propounded the believe that the "Hamburg massacre" was the fault of Black South Carolina leaders.
- ... if it had not been for the blasting effects of slavery, whose deadly pall has so long spread its folds over this nation, to the destruction of peace, union, and concord. Most particularly has its baneful influence been felt in the south, causing the people to be at once restless and discontented. Even now, sir, after the great conflict between slavery and freedom, after the triumph achieved at such a cost, we can yet see the traces of the disastrous strife and the remains of disease in the body-politic of the south. In proof of this witness the frequent outrages perpetrated upon our loyal men. The prevailing spirit of the southron is either to rule or to ruin. Voters must perforce succumb to their wishes or else risk life itself in the attempt to maintain a simple right of common manhood."
- I could dwell upon the sorrows of poor women, with their helpless infants, cast upon the world, homeless and destitute, deprived of their natural protectors by the red hand of the midnight assassin. I could appeal to you, members upon this floor, as husbands and fathers, to picture to yourselves the desolation of your own happy firesides should you be suddenly snatched away from your loved ones. Think of gray-haired men, whose fourscore years are almost numbered, the venerated heads of peaceful households, without warning murdered for political opinion's sake
- Speech in Favor of Civil Rights of 1875
... I am somewhat surprised to perceive that on this occasion, when the demand is made upon Congress by the people to guarantee those rights to a race heretofore oppressed, we should find gentlemen on the other side taking another view of the case from which they professed in the past. The gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] has taken a legal view of this question, and he is undoubtedly capable of taking that view. I am not a lawyer, and consequently I cannot take a legal view of this matter, or perhaps I cannot view it through the same optics that he does. I view it in light of the Constitution - in light of the amendments that have been made to that Constitution; I view it in the light of humanity; I view in the light of the progress and civilization which are now rapidly marching over this country. We, sirs, would not ask of this Congress as a people that they should legislate for us specifically as a class if we could only have those rights which this bill is designed to give us accorded us without this enactment. I can very well understand the opposition to this measure by gentlemen on the other side of the House, and especially of those who come from the South. They have a feeling against the negro in this country that I suppose will never die out. They have an antipathy against that race of people, because of their loyalty to this Government, and because at the very time when they were needed to show their manhood and valor they came forward in defense of the flag of the country and assisted in crushing out the rebellion. They, sir, would not give the colored man the right to vote or the right to enjoy any of those immunities which are enjoyed by other citizens, if it had a tendency to make him feel his manhood and elevate him above the ordinary way of life. So long as he makes himself content with ordinary gifts, why it is all well; but when e aspires to be a man, when he seeks to have the rights accorded him that other citizens in the country enjoy then he is asking too much and such gentlemen as the gentlemen from the Kentucky are not willing to grant it.
... just as soon as we begin to assert our manhood and demand our rights we are looked upon as men not worthy to be recognized, we become objectionable, we become obnoxious, and we hear this howl about social equality.
...We do not ask the passage of any law forcing us upon anybody who does not want to receive us. But we do want a law enacted that we may be recognized like other men in the country. Why is it that colored members of Congress cannot enjoy the same immunities that are accorded to white members? Why cannot we stop at hotels here without meeting objection? Why cannot we go into restaurants without being insulted? We are here enacting laws for the country and casting votes upon important questions; we have been sent here by the suffrages of the people, and why cannot we enjoy the same benefits that are accorded to our white colleagues on this floor?
I say to you, gentlemen, that you are making a mistake. Public opinion is aroused on this question. I tell you that the negro will never rest until he gets his rights. We ask them because we know it is proper, not because we want to deprive any other class of the rights and immunities they enjoy, because they are granted to us by the law of the land. Why this discrimination against us when we enter public conveyances or places of public amusement? Why is a discrimination made against us in the churches; and why in the cemeteries when we go to pay that last debt of nature that brings us all upon a level?
Gentlemen, I say to you this discrimination must cease. We are determined to fight this question; we believe the Constitution gives us this right. All of the fifteen amendments made to the Constitution run down in one single line of protecting the rights of the citizens of this country. One after another of those amendments give these rights to citizens; step by step these rights are secured to them. And now we say to you that if you will not obey the Constitution, then the power is given by that Constitution for the enactment of such a law as will have a tendency to enforce the provisions thereof.
