de eerste African American in het congres van de United States of America??
Representative Joseph H. Rainey (1832 - 1887) was drafted by the Confederacy during the Civil War, but escaped to Bermuda, where slavery was illegal. After the war, Rainey moved back to Georgetown, SC, and became a member of the South Carolina Republican Party executive committee. After representing Georgetown at the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention, he was elected to the state senate in 1870.
Rainey was elected in a special election to represent the First District of South Carolina in the United States House of Representatives. On December 12, 1870, he was sworn in as a Member of the Forty-first Congress and soon joined the Committee on Freedmen's Affairs. He used his position to advocate an end to racial discrimination and using the military to protect black voters from violence perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan.
Rainey remained in office through the Forty-third Congress and eventually became a member of the Indian Affairs Committee. During a debate on a related appropriations bill, Rainey replaced then Speaker James Blaine as chair and presided over a House session, becoming the first African-American to do so. Rainey served until 1878.