Joseph H. Rainey House
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nomadwillie
N 33° 22.124 W 079° 17.040
17S E 659640 N 3693481
Joseph H. Rainey House, also known as Rainey-Camlin House, was the Georgetown, South Carolina home of the first black United States Congressman, Joseph H. Rainey, a former slave.
Waymark Code: WM7XG3
Location: South Carolina, United States
Date Posted: 12/18/2009
Views: 3
Rainey, born a slave in 1832 in Georgetown, became a freed black as his parents succeeded in buying their own freedom. His parents were reasonably prosperous with a barbershop business in Charleston, South Carolina which allowed Joseph to gain some private education.
He worked as a steward on a Confederate blockade-runner ship in 1861. After he was drafted to serve the Confederacy as a laborer in 1862, he was able to escape with his wife to Bermuda, where he also worked as a barber and continued his education.
In 1866, they returned to South Carolina. In 1868 he was elected to the South Carolina state senate. In 1870 he assumed the U.S. Congress position denied to B. F. Whittemore on grounds of Whittemore's apparent corruption. He was reelected, and served four terms, finally losing election in 1878.
He was the longest serving Black congressman until William L. Dawson in the 1950s.
As a Congressman he spoke vigorously in support of enforcement of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
Rainey returned to his Georgetown home in 1886 and died in 1887.
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