Distinguished African American Political and Governmental Leaders

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Reproduced from the Collections of the Library of Congress

Born: June 21, 1832, in Georgetown, South Carolina

Status: Died August 2, 1887, in Georgetown, South Carolina; buried in the Baptist Cemetery, Georgetown, South Carolina

Education: Self-educated

Position: Barber, 1840s; conscripted steward on a Confederate blockade-runner, 1861-1862; barber, St. Georges, Bermuda, 1862-1866; representative for Georgetown, South Carolina, constitutional convention, 1868; state senator, South Carolina State Senate, 1870; U.S. representative from the First Congressional District of South Carolina, 1870-1879; first black representative to preside over a session of the House of Representatives, May, 1874; agent of internal revenue, South Carolina, 1879-1881; broker, banker, Washington, D.C., 1882-1886

Joseph Hayne Rainey was born on June 21, 1832, in Georgetown, South Carolina, of parents who were of mixed heritage. His father, Edward Rainey, a successful barber, had been able to purchase his family's freedom before Rainey's birth. By the time Rainey was 14 years old, he had joined his father in his profession of barber. That same year, 1846, the family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where father and son continued to work as barbers. Rainey also was able to obtain some education.

With the start of the Civil War, Rainey was conscripted as a steward on a Confederate blockade runner. A year earlier, in Philadelphia, he had married a woman named Susan. In 1862, he seized the opportunity to escape the Con

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