Black Americans from South Carolina in Congress
presented by South Carolina Genealogy Trails



Alonzo Jacob Ransier
Representative, 1873–1875, Republican from South Carolina

South Carolina’s first black lieutenant governor, Alonzo Ransier had a reputation for fighting corruption that helped him win election to the 43rd Congress (1873–1875). An observer on the House Floor described him as “a man of great courage and sagacity,” concluding, “Mr. Ransier’s political career has been a varied and powerful one, and his strong, tough, active brain makes him an effective and worthy worker in the House.”

Alonzo Jacob Ransier was born to free parents—likely Haitian immigrants of mulatto French background—on January 3, 1834, in Charleston, South Carolina. As a free black child, he received a limited education before beginning work as a shipping clerk at age 16. Free African Americans were prohibited by state law from holding jobs other than those involving manual labor, and his employer was brought to trial; however, the law generally often went unenforced, and, in Ransier’s case, the judge levied a fine of only one cent plus court costs.

Ransier’s prewar freedom provided him the financial security and prominence to establish himself quickly in postwar South Carolina politics. In 1865, the military governor of the Carolinas, General Daniel Sickles, appointed Ransier as register of elections. In October 1865, Ransier participated in a Charleston meeting of the Friends of Equal Rights and was part of a delegation charged with presenting a petition to the U.S. Congress. Ransier’s political star rose in 1868. In January, he served as a delegate from Charleston to the South Carolina constitutional convention. The following October, he took over the post of Republican state central committee chairman after Benjamin F. Randolph was assassinated by the Ku Klux Klan. The following November, he served as a South Carolina elector for President Ulysses S. Grant and was elected to the state house of representatives where he served one term.

Although he was not a dominant personality in South Carolina politics, Ransier became a well-recognized and popular leader in Charleston. In 1870, he reached what is widely considered the apex of his political career when he defeated ex-Confederate General M. C. Butler to become South Carolina’s first black lieutenant governor, under Governor Robert K. Scott. His position afforded him an opportunity to preside over the state senate as well as the Southern States Convention in Columbia in 1871. Ransier’s tenure in South Carolina’s executive government was remarkable for his honesty in a notoriously corrupt administration.

In August 1872, Representative Robert De Large declined the renomination for his coastal South Carolina seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, citing poor health. Local Republicans selected Ransier to represent the district, whose population was 70 percent black. Ransier defeated Independent Republican candidate General William Gurney with 20,061 votes (75 percent) in the general election.

When he was sworn in to the 43rd Congress Ransier received De Large’s assignment to the Committee on Manufactures. His earnest but conventional attempts to look after the interests of his coastal Carolina constituents in the House were typically ignored. He introduced measures to erect a public building in Beaufort, South Carolina, and to rebuild the war-damaged west wing of the Citadel Academy in Charleston. Ransier also requested $100,000 to improve Charleston Harbor. However, none of these bills passed.

Representative Ransier broke from his understated legislative style to speak passionately on several occasions in 1874 during debate on the Civil Rights Bill. On February 7, Ransier delivered a speech, which was later published and distributed, asserting that African Americans’ resistance to punishing ex-Confederates demonstrated a desire for racial harmony and praising the black soldiers who fought for the Union in the Civil War. He stressed freedmen’s overwhelming loyalty to the Republican Party, stating that such fidelity should be rewarded by the passage of the Civil Rights Bill. Ransier also focused on the portion of the bill calling for equal educational opportunities, discussing the advantages of integrated education, and citing mixed-race programs at Oberlin College and at Wilberforce, Harvard, and Yale Universities. Ransier believed equal rights and opportunities in education would allow talented black men to achieve a respectable position in their communities, ultimately curbing discrimination. “Let the doors of the public school house be thrown open to us alike,” he declared, “if you mean to give these people equal rights at all, or to protect them in the exercise of the rights and privileges attaching to all free men and citizens of our country.” For Ransier, the legislation rose above party politics. He pleaded with opponents not to defeat the bill to spite corrupt Republican state governments: “Because some officials in [the South] have abused the public confidence and prostituted their office should violence be done to a great principle of justice and … a race denied therein equal rights in a government like ours? It cannot be. Let justice be done though the heavens fall.” When the Civil Rights Bill came to a vote in February 1875, the education clause had been eliminated. Ransier was so disappointed, he declined to vote.

Upon returning to South Carolina in 1874, Ransier was outspoken about his disenchantment with the corruption in scalawag Governor Franklin Moses’s administration. The governor’s crimes were infamous. Having paid off some of his personal debt with public funds and sold executive pardons to prisoners, Moses resisted arrest by calling the South Carolina militia to defend him. His well-paid allies in the state legislature saved him from impeachment, and Moses carefully placed his friends in key patronage positions to maintain his political control. Ransier aligned himself with a faction in the South Carolina Republican Party calling for statewide reform. Ransier’s insubordination cost him the renomination for his congressional seat at the district convention. He lost the bid to Charles W. Buttz (whom Ransier accused of buying the nomination for $4,000). Despite his break with local Republicans, Ransier supported the party ticket in November. Buttz lost the election to Independent Republican Edmund Mackey, who also opposed the Moses administration, but the seat was declared vacant in July 1876 when Buttz contested the election.

Soon after Ransier left Congress, his wife, Louisa Ann Carroll Ransier, died giving birth to their 11th child, whom Ransier named Charles Sumner Ransier for the late Massachusetts Senator. Alonzo Ransier married Mary Louisa McKinlay in 1876. In an effort to provide for his large family, he secured an appointment as U.S. Internal Revenue Service collector in Charleston, despite his abhorrence of corruption and hence, political patronage. He later appealed to Governor Daniel Chamberlain for a position in the South Carolina state government when his tenure as a tax collector came to an end. Ransier did not receive a nomination, but worked instead as a night watchman in a customs house and as a municipal street sweeper. Lapsing into poverty by 1880, he lived in a crowded Charleston boarding house. Ransier died in obscurity on August 17, 1882, at age 48. (Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008.)

First Colored Senator and Representatives 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States
Highlighting those from South Carolina



(Left to right) Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi, Representatives Benjamin Turner of Alabama, Robert DeLarge of South Carolina, Josiah Walls of Florida, Jefferson Long of Georgia, Joseph Rainey and Robert B. Elliot of South Carolina (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Robert Carlos De Large

Representative, 1871–1873, Republican from South Carolina

A wealthy resident of Charleston, South Carolina, Robert De Large won election to the U.S. House of Representatives as an ally of the scandal-ridden administration of Republican Governor Robert Scott. Though he maintained a personal political alliance with Scott, De Large was constantly at odds with the state Republican Party and rarely defended the corrupt state government. “I am free to admit,” De Large noted on the House Floor while advocating for victims of racial violence in the South, “that neither the Republicans of my State nor the Democrats of that State can shake their garments and say that they had no hand in bringing about this condition of affairs.” A protracted contested election, in which De Large’s lack of political capital, prickly personality and failing health conspired against him, cut short the young politician’s career.

Robert Carlos De Large was born on March 15, 1842, in Aiken, South Carolina. Although some records indicate De Large was born a slave, he likely was the offspring of free mulatto parents. De Large’s father was a tailor, and his Haitian mother was a cloak maker. The De Large family owned slaves and, as members of the free mulatto elite, were afforded opportunities denied their darker-skinned neighbors. Robert De Large was educated at a North Carolina primary school and attended Wood High School in Charleston, South Carolina. He later married and had a daughter, Victoria. De Large was a tailor and a farmer before gaining lucrative employment with the Confederate Navy during the Civil War. Perhaps regretting the source of his financial windfall, De Large later donated most of his wartime earnings to the Republican Party. Nevertheless, by 1870 he had amassed a fortune that exceeded $6,500. He moved within Charleston’s highest circles and joined the Brown Fellowship Society, an exclusive organization for mullatos.

After the war, De Large worked for the Republican state government as an agent in the Freedmen’s Bureau. He became an organizer for the South Carolina Republican Party, serving on important committees at several state conventions. He chaired the credentials committee at the 1865 Colored People’s Convention at Charleston’s Zion Church. At the 1867 South Carolina Republican Convention, he chaired the platform committee, and he served on the committee on franchise and elections at the state’s 1868 constitutional convention. Among African-American politicians of the era, De Large was comparatively conservative. He advocated mandatory literacy testing for voters but opposed compulsory education while supporting state-funded and integrated schools. He did favor some more radical measures, however, arguing that the government should penalize ex-Confederates by retaining their property and disfranchising them. In 1868, De Large won his first elected office, serving in the state house of representatives where he chaired the ways and means committee. He also served on a board for the mentally ill and was a member of the state sinking fund commission. In 1870, seeking a black appointee, the legislature chose De Large as land commissioner. In his quest to help South Carolina’s poor, De Large oversaw the sale and transfer of almost 2,000 small tracts of land to be paid for over a maximum of eight years, but his tenure on the land commission was discredited by allegations of fraud. Political opponents suspected that De Large skimmed money from the commission to help finance his congressional campaign, but he was never charged with a crime.

In 1870, De Large set his sights on a congressional district representing Charleston and the southeastern portion of the state. He secured the Republican nomination over incumbent scalawag Christopher Bowen, a former Confederate soldier and one of Governor Scott’s most formidable political enemies. According to a leading historian, De Large maintained a personal friendship with the embattled governor, although he was often at odds with Scott’s supporters. De Large refused to defend white South Carolina Republicans against charges of corruption and often publicly chided those connected with Scott’s administration for their unscrupulous activities. Yet Scott continued to support De Large throughout his political career, primarily because of their friendship.

Christopher Bowen challenged De Large in the 1870 general election, running as an Independent Republican. Having lost favor with the black majority (68 percent of the district’s population) due to the influence of Bowen’s allies, De Large was ahead by only a slender margin (fewer than 1,000 votes out of more than 32,000 cast) despite considerable political and financial support from Governor Scott. Bowen challenged the election results, but De Large was sworn in to the 42nd Congress (1871–1873) when it convened on March 4, 1871, and assigned to the Committee on Manufactures.

De Large’s legislative agenda as a freshman Member lacked continuity, principally because of the large workload created by Bowen’s challenge. Early in his term, De Large unsuccessfully offered an amendment to provide $20,000 to rebuild a Charleston orphanage. He also supported a bill providing amnesty to former Confederates, but felt loyal black and white southerners should be protected from intimidation and terror. Arguing in favor of a bill to curb the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in April 1871, De Large referred to intolerable conditions throughout the South that required action from Congress. “The naked facts stare us in the face, that this condition of affairs does exist, and that it is necessary for the strong arm of the law to interpose and protect the people in their lives, liberty, and property,” he noted. However, De Large was emphatic that his Charleston district had no reported cases of “outlawry” but admitted that “until within the last few months no one upon the face of God’s earth could have convinced me that a secret organization existed in my State for the purpose of committing murder, arson, and other outrages.”0

De Large’s unvarnished comments on the House Floor about local party corruption caused him to run afoul of state Republicans. Responding to a speech by Democrat Samuel Cox of New York—in which Cox accused black politicians of fueling the corruption in South Carolina’s government—De Large insisted that black South Carolina politicians were guilty only of trusting corrupt white Republicans. “While there may have been extravagance and corruption resulting from the placing of improper men in official positions,” De Large declared, “these evils have been brought about by the men identified with the race to which the gentleman from New York belongs, and not by our race.” Republicans outside South Carolina praised De Large’s speech—the Chicago Tribune said it showed “fearlessness and frankness”—but white political leaders inside South Carolina were infuriated by De Large’s accusations. White party leadership suspected he was trying to create a political party that would alienate blacks from the Republican Party. De Large had reportedly told a Charleston crowd, “I hold that my race has always been Republican for necessity only,” during his 1870 election campaign. Though he denied rumors he planned to change parties, De Large’s alliance with black nationalist Martin R. Delany, who had abandoned the Republican Party, fueled such speculation.

De Large participated sparingly in House Floor debate during the second session, as he was occupied defending his seat. The House Committee on Elections began consideration of Christopher Bowen’s challenge to his election in December 1871, and De Large took a leave of absence in April 1872 to prepare his defense.

Bowen’s sensationalized bigamy trial—his political enemies accused him of marrying a third wife without having legally separated from his first and second wives—focused national attention on the case and damaged Bowen’s chances of successfully contesting De Large’s election. Nevertheless, Bowen accused De Large supporters of stuffing ballot boxes with false votes and was backed by white South Carolina Republicans. The Chicago Tribune observed wryly, “It really seems that the only way a South Carolina politician can keep out of State Prison or in Congress is by proving all the rest to be bigger scoundrels than himself.” Despite Bowen’s political problems, De Large had few political allies. He had developed a less-than-favorable reputation with his stubborn, elitist, and temperamental antics, including a fistfight in front of the state assembly in 1869. Even fellow black lawmakers offered stinging judgments. South Carolina Representative Robert Elliott derided De Large for his small stature and outsized ego, calling him a “pygmy who is trying to play the part of a giant.” Left to mount his own defense, De Large accused Bowen of bribing a lawyer to keep exonerating evidence from the Committee on Elections. The case was further complicated when De Large’s health failed in the summer of 1872. Black South Carolina Representative Joseph Rainey pleaded on the House Floor for a delay in the case, but the committee reported that the many abuses and irregularities during the election made determining a victor impossible, and on January 18, 1873, declared the seat vacant for the rest of the 42nd Congress, set to adjourn in March. The full House agreed with the committee’s findings.

The rigors of defending his seat in the 42nd Congress took a toll on De Large’s fragile health and left him few options other than retirement. Black politician Alonzo Ransier won his seat. De Large returned to the state capital in Columbia and later moved to Charleston after Governor Scott appointed him magistrate of that city. He died of tuberculosis shortly thereafter on February 14, 1874, at the age of 31. Despite De Large’s difficult relationship with South Carolina Republicans, city magistrates statewide closed their offices on the day of his funeral to show their respect. (Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008.)

Joseph Hayne Rainey

Representative, 1870–1879, Republican from South Carolina

Born into slavery, Joseph Rainey was the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, the first African American to preside over the House, and the longest-serving African American during the tumultuous Reconstruction period. While Rainey’s representation—like that of the other 21 black Representatives of the era—was symbolic, he also demonstrated the political nuance of a seasoned, substantive Representative, balancing his defense of southern blacks’ civil rights by extending amnesty to the defeated Confederates. “I tell you that the Negro will never rest until he gets his rights,” he said on the House Floor. “We ask [for civil rights] because we know it is proper,” Rainey added, “not because we want to deprive any other class of the rights and immunities they enjoy, but because they are granted to us by the law of the land.”

Joseph Hayne Rainey was born on June 21, 1832, to Grace and Edward L. Rainey in Georgetown, South Carolina, a seaside town consisting mainly of rice plantations. The Raineys raised at least one other child, Edward, Jr. Grace Rainey was of French descent. Edward Rainey was a barber, and his master permitted him to work independently if he shared some of his profits, as required by law. Rainey used his earnings to buy his family’s freedom in the early 1840s, and in 1846 the family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where Edward became a barber at the exclusive Mills House Hotel. As giving official instruction to black children was illegal, Joseph Rainey received a limited education and his father taught him the barber’s trade. By the 1850s, Edward Rainey could afford to buy two male slaves for his family.2 In 1859, Joseph Rainey traveled to Philadelphia, where he met and married his wife, Susan, also a half-French mulatto, originally from the West Indies. Rainey continued to work as a barber, and the couple had three children: Joseph II, Herbert, and Olivia.

The Confederate Army called Rainey to service when the Civil War broke out in 1861. At first, he dug trenches to fortify the outskirts of Charleston. He later worked as a cook and a steward aboard a blockade runner, a Confederate ship charged with carrying tradable goods through the Union Navy’s blockade of the South. In 1862, he and his wife escaped to Bermuda. The self-governed British colony had abolished slavery in 1834, and proved a hospitable home for the Raineys, who took advantage of the thriving economy and growing population that resulted from the lucrative blockade-running business. The Raineys lived in St. George and Hamilton, Bermuda, where Joseph set up a successful barbershop and Susan Rainey opened a dress store. The Raineys were informed about the progress of the Civil War by passing sailors and, after the Union victory, returned to Charleston in 1866.

The wealth Joseph Rainey acquired in Bermuda elevated his status in the community, and looked upon as a leader, he soon became active in the Republican Party. In 1867, Rainey returned to Georgetown, South Carolina, and became the Republican county chairman. When a state constitutional convention was called in 1868, Rainey traveled to Charleston to represent Georgetown. In 1869, he also attended a state labor commission and served as Georgetown’s census taker. In the late 1860s, he worked as an agent for the state land commission and was a brigadier general in the state militia. Joseph Rainey was elected to his first public office in 1870 when he won a seat in the state senate, where he immediately became chairman of the finance committee.

In February 1870, Representative Benjamin F. Whittemore resigned his northeastern South Carolina seat, having been charged with selling appointments to U.S. military academies. The Republican Party nominated Rainey for the remainder of Whittemore’s term in the 41st Congress (1869–1871) and for a full term in the 42nd Congress (1871–1873). On October 19, 1870, Rainey won the full term, topping Democrat C. W. Dudley by a substantial majority (63 percent). On November 8, he defeated Dudley once again, garnering more than 86 percent of the vote, in a special election to fill the seat for the remainder of the 41st Congress. Joseph Rainey was sworn in on December 12, 1870, as the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. One month later he was joined by the second black Member, Representative Jefferson Long of Georgia. Rainey’s moderate policies were met with approval by both African-American and white voters, and he was elected without opposition to the 43rd Congress (1873–1875).

Rainey advocated for his constituents—both black and white. He used his growing political clout to influence the South Carolina state legislature to retain the customs duty on rice, the chief export of the district and the state. He also submitted a petition to improve Charleston Harbor and fought against an appropriations cut for Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter in Charleston. However, Rainey’s committee appointments and policies reflected his desire to defend black civil rights, and his loyalty to the Republican Party. Rainey received seats on three standing committees: Freedmen’s Affairs (41st–43rd Congresses), Indian Affairs (43rd Congress), and Invalid Pensions (44th–45th Congresses, 1875–1879). He also served on several select committees, including the Select Committee on the Centennial Celebration and the Proposed National Census of 1875 (44th Congress) and the Committee on the Freedmen’s Bank (44th Congress).

Rainey’s work on the Committee on Freedmen’s Affairs—created in 1865 to handle all legislation concerning newly freed slaves—earned him the most recognition. On April 1, 1871, he delivered his first major speech, arguing for the use of federal troops to protect southern blacks from the recently organized Ku Klux Klan. Enumerating the dangers of returning home to South Carolina on congressional breaks, exposing himself to violence by the Red Shirts—a virulent South Carolina white supremacist organization—Rainey said, “When myself and my colleagues shall leave these Halls and turn our footsteps toward our southern homes, we know not that the assassin may await our coming, as marked for his vengeance.” The Ku Klux Klan Act was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on April 20, 1871, but the bill failed to stop Klan terrorism. After his speech, Rainey received a letter written in red ink instructing him and other advocates of black civil rights to “prepare to meet your God.” White southerners virtually ignored the Ku Klux Klan Act, and congressional opponents circumvented its provisions by eliminating funding. In March of 1872, Rainey found himself arguing for the federal appropriations needed to enforce the act.

Rainey also advocated Radical Republican Senator Charles Sumner’s Civil Rights Bill of 1875, which outlawed racial discrimination on juries, in schools, on transportation, and in public accommodations. Sumner believed a law passed in 1872 granting amnesty to former Confederates should be conditioned by the passage of his civil rights bill. Although Rainey favored the Amnesty Act, which allowed most former Confederates to regain their political rights, he agreed with Sumner because of personal experience with discrimination in both Washington and South Carolina, ranging from exorbitant charges for drinks at a pub, to more serious violations of his civil rights. Rainey also described widespread segregation on public transportation, including trains and streetcars. Speaking for his black constituents, he declared, “We are earnest in our support of the Government. We were earnest in the house of the nation’s perils and dangers; and now, in our country’s comparative peace and tranquility, we are earnest for our rights.”

Rainey focused on the bill’s provisions for desegregation in public schools, an issue that had bedeviled race relations for more than a century. Breaking from fellow Republicans, he was among the minority favoring a $1 poll tax to support public education. Other Republicans successfully argued this would disfranchise most freed slaves. Nonetheless, Rainey continued to advocate education, later arguing that money from the sale of public land should be used to fund public education. Though the Civil Rights Bill passed the House on February 5, 1875, with the Senate quickly concurring, its diluted provisions failed to address desegregation or equality in public schools.

Rainey’s fight against discrimination was not limited to prejudice against African Americans. Appointed to the Committee on Indian Affairs, he made history in April 1874 when he took the chair from Speaker James G. Blaine, becoming the first black American to preside over the House of Representatives. He oversaw the debate on an appropriations bill providing for the management of Indian reservations. Rainey also generally opposed legislation restricting the influx of Asian immigrants to the United States.

Throughout his career, Rainey involved himself in the economic issues that affected his race. Established by Congress in 1865, the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company (Freedmen’s Bank) was envisioned as a means to help newly emancipated African Americans build capital through secure savings. Two-thirds of the bank’s holdings were originally invested in United States treasury bonds. In 1870, an amendment to the bank’s charter allowing half of its deposits to be invested in real estate bonds came to the floor. Recognizing the instability of such an investment, Rainey opposed the amendment and stood behind congressional control over the institution: “I am opposed to any one man holding assets of that bank, having them wholly at his disposal, I do not care who he is, whether he be colored or white, whether he be a German or an Irishman it makes no difference to me. I want no one man to handle the assets of the bank.” His position on the Select Committee on the Freedmen’s Bank gave him a voice, but he and his colleagues were unable to prevent the bank’s failure in 1874.

After an easy re-election in 1872, Rainey’s subsequent campaigns were made vulnerable by the growing threat to Congressional Reconstruction in the South. In 1874, Rainey faced Independent Republican Samuel Lee, another African American and a former speaker of the state house of representatives, in a dangerous and close campaign. When Rainey planned to travel to a meeting in Bennettsville, South Carolina, friends warned him that Lee’s supporters were planning a violent intervention. Accompanied by a large posse of friends and met by U.S. soldiers upon his arrival, Rainey arrived safely and the meeting was peaceful. Rainey won the election, taking 14,360 votes (52 percent) to Lee’s 13,563, but Lee demanded that the House Committee on Elections void some of Rainey’s votes due to a spelling error in Rainey’s name on some ballots. The committee upheld Rainey’s election, with the whole House concurring in May 1876. That same year, Rainey defeated Democrat John S. Richardson for a seat in the 45th Congress, again winning a tight campaign with 52 percent of the vote (18,180 to Richardson’s 16,661). Richardson later accused Rainey and the Republican Party of voter intimidation. Noting the presence of federal troops during the election, Richardson also claimed that armed black political clubs and black militia were scaring voters at the polls. Richardson’s election had been certified by Democratic South Carolina Governor Wade Hampton, and Rainey maintained that only the South Carolina secretary of state could certify elections. Rainey took his seat, but in May 1878 the Committee on Elections declared the seat vacant, citing irregularities. The House failed to act on the committee report, and Rainey kept his seat for the remainder of his term.

Rainey’s final two terms were wracked by setbacks for African-American civil rights in South Carolina and the final blow that virtually ended federal Reconstruction in the South. On the American centennial on July 4, 1876, black militia celebrated by parading through a street in Hamburg, South Carolina. When a group of white men attempted to cross the street, the black soldiers refused to stop. The white men subsequently fired upon and killed several militiamen. Debate over the incident became bitter on the House Floor during Rainey’s final term in the 45th Congress. Rainey condemned the murders and exchanged coarse remarks with Democratic Representative Samuel Cox of New York, who believed the “Hamburg massacre” resulted from poor government by black South Carolina leaders. Bolstered by renewed Democratic control in South Carolina, John S. Richardson defeated Rainey in the 1878 election for the 46th Congress (1879–1881) by more than 8,000 votes. Joseph Rainey retired from the House on March 3, 1879.

Upon his departure from Congress, Rainey was promised that Republicans would nominate him as Clerk of the House of Representatives; however, Democratic control over the 46th Congress precluded Rainey’s selection as Clerk. When Republicans regained control of Congress in 1881, Rainey spent time in Washington trying to secure the appointment, but he lost the nomination. In 1879, Rainey was appointed a special agent of the U.S. Treasury Department in South Carolina. After being endorsed by 84 Representatives, including future President James A. Garfield of Ohio, Rainey served two years. In 1881, he started a brokerage and banking business in Washington, but the firm collapsed five years later. For one year, he managed a coal mining operation and a wood yard before returning to Georgetown in ill health. Joseph and Susan Rainey opened a millinery shop shortly before Joseph died of congestive fever on August 1, 1887. (Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008. )

A former slave, Representative George Murray was the only black Member in the 53rd and 54th Congresses (1893–1897). Murray was highly regarded by his peers because of his position. An 1893 newspaper called him "the most intellectual negro in the [Sumter] county." However, Murray’s detractors doubted his eloquence, accusing him of hiring a ghostwriter for his floor speeches. Employing his formidable oratorical skills, Murray fought the disfranchisement laws that beset the South in the early 1890s. He was a political pragmatist who worked for his constituents while placating the hostile political base necessary for his election campaigns. Unable to defeat the overwhelming tide of white supremacy, either nationally or at home, Murray left the House, marking the end of black representation in South Carolina for nearly 100 years.

George Washington Murray was born on September 22, 1853, near Rembert, in Sumter County, South Carolina. His parents, whose names are not known, were slaves and died before the end of the Civil War; however, Murray had at least two brothers, Prince and Frank. Murray never received a formal primary education, but in 1874 he entered the University of South Carolina in Columbia after it was opened to black students by the Republican state government. After federal withdrawal from the South following the end of Reconstruction in 1877, Murray and the other black students were forced out of the university. He eventually graduated from the nearby State Normal Institution. Murray married Ella Reynolds in 1877, and they had two children, Edward and Pearl. Murray also had an illegitimate son, William, who was born sometime in the 1890s.5

Working as a farmer, a teacher, and a lecturer in Sumter County, Murray obtained eight patents for various farming tools.6 His farming success garnered him local recognition, and his selection as the Sumter County delegate to the 1880 Republican Party state convention sparked his interest in politics. Murray’s support of Republican President Benjamin Harrison during the 1888 campaign won him a patronage appointment as customs inspector at the port of Charleston in February 1890. That same year he sought the nomination for the South Carolina "shoestring district," which included sections of Charleston and Georgetown on the coast and twisted narrowly to the northeast to include central portions of the state. Two black Representatives had been elected in the district: Civil War hero Robert Smalls and incumbent Thomas Miller. Miller defeated Murray for the Republican nomination but eventually lost the seat to Democrat William Elliott.

In 1892, Murray ran again for the congressional seat. Conducting a campaign that emphasized his African roots (his opponent, Thomas Miller, was light-skinned), Murray defeated Miller and white candidate E. W. Brayton to capture the Republican nomination. Though the "shoestring district" had been modified slightly by reapportionment, nearly 75 percent of the population was black. During the general election, especially in areas outside Charleston, precinct workers rejected votes for Murray for insignificant reasons, for example, the candidate’s ballots were one-eighth or three-sixteenths of an inch too short, the ballot boxes were not opened at the appointed time, or the precinct managers failed to record the name of the precinct before sending the election returns to Columbia. However, Murray’s chances were strengthened by divisions within the district’s Democratic Party. Governor Benjamin Tillman, who led a statewide white supremacy political machine, found himself at odds with the district’s Democratic candidate, E. M. Moise. Moise disagreed with the governor in rejecting Populist economic issues such as the coinage of silver, which emerged as a national issue during the 1892 election. The primarily agricultural residents of the "shoestring district," who had been hit hard by economic depression, supported free silver coinage as a form of debt relief. The complicated political atmosphere made for a close election. Though Moise was originally declared the winner, canvassers for the state board of election (Democratic supporters of Governor Tillman) exacted revenge on their party’s maverick by confirming that Murray was victorious by 40 votes. He received an assignment to the Committee on Education, but most of Murray’s work in Congress was outside the jurisdiction of this committee.

Murray’s position as the only black Member during his two terms in Congress defined his career. One of the first things he did after arriving in Washington was to visit newly inaugurated Democratic President Grover Cleveland. In a personal meeting with the President, Murray told Cleveland that southern blacks were concerned about their welfare under a Democratic President but that the new administration had a fresh opportunity to welcome African Americans into the Democratic Party. Murray asked Cleveland to consider appointing more blacks to political offices through patronage, but neither the President nor his congressional allies prioritized building political capital among black Americans.

When a financial panic gripped the country in early 1893, President Cleveland blamed much of the economic instability on the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act. He sought to repeal the law, which required the federal government to trade 4.5 million ounces of silver bullion each month in exchange for legal tender. Cleveland called a special session of Congress to deal with the crisis. During this session, Murray and other supporters joined the 12 Populists and Silverites in defending the Silver Purchase Act. Speaking on the House Floor on August 24, 1893, Murray argued that most of his constituents earned little and were disadvantaged by the diminishing supply of gold. Believing continued silver coinage would help to stabilize the economy in his district, Murray noted that his constituents traced their overwhelming poverty to "the circulating medium [gold], which like a viper with its victim in its coils, has been drawing its cords tighter and tighter around their prosperity, until it is dead. I am of the opinion that the only sure and permanent remedy is a lengthening of the cords, an enlargement of the volume of money." Although Murray spoke at 10 p.m.—the last time slot of the legislative day—a large crowd gathered in the gallery to hear his maiden speech. Proponents of silver coinage were unable to secure the necessary votes and, despite an 80-day filibuster by Senate Silverites, President Cleveland secured the congressional repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act on November 1, 1893.

In 1893, when Representative Henry Tucker of Virginia authored a bill to remove impartial election supervisors and federal marshals from southern polling places, Murray fearlessly sought to block the legislation. On several occasions, he interrupted Tucker’s allies on the House Floor, citing personal experiences of discrimination. On October 2, 1893, Murray interrupted freshman Representative (and future Speaker) Beauchamp (Champ) Clark of Missouri, who was insisting that state officials adequately monitored polling places. Murray noted that these officials were often prejudiced appointees of white supremacist Democratic state governments. He also refuted Clark’s claim that federal Republican officials coerced black voters into voting as one bloc. Three days later, Murray made a long speech against Representative Tucker’s legislation. He ended by repeating his plea to President Cleveland: "While I can not persuade myself that there can be found here and in the Senate enough cruel and wicked men to make this law effective, still if I am disappointed in that…I hope that the broad-souled and philanthropic man occupying the Executive chair is too brave and humane to join in this cowardly onslaught to strike down the walls impaling the last vestige of liberty to a helpless class of people." A long thunderous bout of applause from the Republican side of the chamber followed Murray’s speech, which earned him the epithet the "Black Eagle of Sumter." Though Murray was absent on October 10 when the Tucker legislation came to a vote, he called upon black voters to study the roll call vote and defeat any Member who voted in its favor in the next election. The bill passed both chambers and was signed into law by President Cleveland in February 1894. In 1894, Murray faced an uphill battle for re-election to the 54th Congress. The South Carolina legislature dissolved the "shoestring district," cutting off much of Charleston and Murray’s black voting base. Democratic infighting ceased when former Representative William Elliott won the Democratic nomination. Elliott emerged with 60 percent of the vote in the general election, but several precincts reported instances of fraud. Murray appealed to the state board of election canvassers, but they rejected his claim.

As a result, Murray spent the third session of the 53rd Congress (1893–1895) preparing to contest Elliott’s election before the House. He submitted a massive amount of testimony indicating election fraud; the paperwork was reported to be nearly a foot thick. Murray’s evidence revealed that ballot boxes in three of four heavily Republican counties in his new district were never opened, that black voters were issued fraudulent registration certificates or paperwork was withheld entirely, and that precincts in black regions failed to open. Witnesses also reported that William Elliott himself stood in front of ballot boxes taunting black men and preventing them from submitting their votes. The worst fraud occurred in the small portion of southern Charleston that remained in Murray’s district. A precinct compromising 2,000 more registered black voters than white declared 2,811 votes for Elliott and 397 for Murray. After reviewing the testimony, the House Committee on Elections—composed of a strong Republican majority—concluded that the final victory belonged to Murray by 434 votes. The whole House first took up the case late in the first session of the 54th Congress on June 3, 1896. Democrats spent several hours trying to prove that South Carolina registration laws had been explained to black voters and that Murray was not favored by all African-American voters and thus could not claim the district’s majority based on his race. The next day, the House voted to seat Murray, 153 to 33. With only seven days remaining in the first session, Murray was again assigned to the Committee on Education and was also appointed to the Committee on Expenditures in the Treasury Department.

Political trouble at home prevented Murray from attending the final two sessions of the 54th Congress. In 1895, Tillman Democrats in the state legislature passed a referendum to revise the 1868 state constitution. Murray tried to organize black voters to elect sympathetic delegates to the constitutional convention, but only six black delegates were sent, including former Representatives Robert Smalls and Thomas Miller. The results were disastrous for black South Carolina voters. The primarily white, Democratic convention created new requirements for proving residency, instituted poll taxes, established property requirements, and created literacy tests—all aimed at disfranchising black voters. Murray and fellow Republicans asked Governor Tillman to call a special session of the state legislature in March 1896. The governor ignored the appeal. In July 1896, Murray and others authored the address "To the People of the United States," requesting national support for federal intervention in the South Carolina elections. Murray spent most of 1896 raising money to pay legal fees for challenges to the new registration laws in federal courts, vowing that fighting "lawfully, not unlawfully…we shall create such conditions that the United States is bound to take a hand." Murray’s optimistic prediction fell short. Legal action brought a poll tax case before the Supreme Court in 1895 in Mills v. Green, but the court ruled that the tax did not violate the 14th Amendment. The same ruling on a similar case brought before the high court—Williams v. Mississippi in 1898—nearly halted the legal battle against disfranchisement laws and virtually sealed off national elected office for African Americans in the South. Indeed, the new provisions for voting registration dimmed Murray’s chances for re-election in 1896; Elliott easily defeated him, with 67 percent of the vote.

Returning to Congress as a lame duck in February 1897, Murray announced he would object to South Carolina’s nine electoral votes in the presidential election—which went to Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan—if Congress did not investigate the state’s new election laws. He submitted a petition signed by hundreds of South Carolina Republicans, alleging that more than 100,000 eligible black men had been refused the vote in the 1896 election. Influential Republicans attempted to dissuade Murray, fearful that disrupting the electoral vote count would impede Republican William McKinley’s apparent victory. Murray dropped his objection but not his call for a federal investigation. He submitted a resolution requesting an investigation. However, Congress adjourned in March, ignoring his request.

After leaving Congress, Murray returned to his South Carolina farm. He invested in more land, which he sold to black tenant farmers. In 1905, Murray was convicted in a circuit court for forgery related to a contract dispute between two of his tenants. Murray fled to Chicago to avoid the sentence of three years’ hard labor, insisting he had received an unfair sentence because of his race. Ella Murray was unwilling to leave South Carolina, and the two divorced. Murray married Cornelia Martin in 1908 and gained a stepdaughter, Gaynell. The Murrays adopted a 10-year-old boy, Donald, in the 1920s and parented numerous foster children.

Murray became active in the Republican Party in Chicago. His distrust of local Democrats eventually led him to request that the House investigate the powerful Cook County Democratic political machine. He also tried a number of unsuccessful business ventures. Late in his life, Murray lectured across the country. He compiled many of his speeches into two books on race relations: Race Ideals: Effects, Cause and Remedy for Afro-American Race Troubles (1914) and Light in Dark Places (1925).35 Both books posited that discrimination would persist until Americans appreciated the worth and dignity of African Americans. Following Murray’s death on April 21, 1926, his longtime Chicago neighbor, former Mississippi Representative John Roy Lynch delivered his eulogy. (Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008)

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