June 21: Joseph Rainey, First African American US Congressman

He was born a slave, freed, raised in the South, fled during the Civil War, and became the first black American to be a United States Congressman, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives for eight years.

Joseph Hayne Rainey was born a slave in Georgetown, South Carolina on June 21, 1832. His father, Edward, was a barber who shrewdly managed his monies, allowing him to purchase freedom for himself, his wife Gracia, and his children in the 1840s. After buying their freedom, the Rainey’s moved in 1846 to Charleston, South Carolina, where George provided a comfortable living through his skills as a barber by working at one of the top hotels in South Carolina, the Mills Hotel. The Mills Hotel had opened its doors in 1853 and soon achieved a reputation for excellence – and is still in existence today. In an unusual turn of events, George Rainey became prosperous enough by 1860 that he could afford two slaves of his own.

While not much is known about Joseph Rainey’s youth, it is known that he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps by becoming a barber himself. He did receive limited schooling. In the late-1850s, Rainey moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he met and married Susan – who was originally from the West Indies. They moved back to Charleston in 1859.

Rainey was twenty-eight years old when the American Civil War erupted in April 1861, with the shelling of Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina – where Joseph Rainey lived and worked. Rainey was soon drafted by the Confederate government to work on the network of fortifications around Charleston Harbor. He soon moved from that labor into being a steward on a blockade-runner.

In 1862 Rainey and his wife secretly fled from their home, escaping to Bermuda for the duration of the war on a blockade-runner that traveled from Charleston to Bermuda. They settled for three years in St. George, Bermuda, where they earned a living – Rainey as a barber and his wife as a successful dressmaker. When a yellow fever epidemic struck St. George, the Rainey’s moved to Hamilton where Rainey worked as a barber and a bartender at the Hamilton Hotel.

Rainey and his wife returned to Charleston after the end of the Civil War. He soon became involved in Reconstruction politics.

In 1865 Rainey – accompanied by his older brother Edward – attended the Colored People’s Convention at Zion Presbyterian Church. The church was pastured by a missionary, Jonathan Gibbs, who has started a school for freed Blacks, and was a ten-year veteran of the abolitionist movement. Gibbs had been sent by the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freed-men, and he would annoy white South Carolinians by hosting a convention that advocated rights for the newly freed slaves. As a result, he would be exiled to pastor a church in a more remote South Carolina county. Gibbs soon left South Carolina. Moving to Florida, he began a political career there that would enable him to become that state’s first Black Secretary of State.

The convention sought ways to advance “the interests of our people”, seeking educational benefits, jobs, and political influence. The effect of the convention was felt by Rainey when he became a member of the executive committee of the state Republican Party, and was elected in 1868 to represent Georgetown at the 1868 constitutional convention. That convention wrote a new constitution for South Carolina. During this time Rainey favored a poll tax – if the monies gathered were used for exclusively for public education. He also supported an effort to legalize the collection of debts contracted before the Civil War including debts incurred in the purchase of slaves. Neither of these ideas were approved in the new constitution. However, he successfully supported an amnesty bill which allowed former Confederate soldiers to regain their civil rights.

As a symbol of the growing power of Reconstruction in the South, Rainey was appointed as a brigadier general in the state militia and served as an agent in the State Land Commission. He also attended the 1869 State Labor Convention, which lobbied the General Assembly for pro-labor legislation to protect black workers.

In 1870 Rainey was elected to the state Senate of South Carolina, where he was soon appointed as the chairman of the senate Finance Committee.

Later that year – on December 12, 1870 - he was elected to fill a vacancy that opened in the U.S. House of Representatives when the House refused to seat Benjamin F. Whittemore. Whittemore had been censured by the House for corruption, and was re-elected by the people of South Carolina – after which the House refused to seat him.

Rainey would be re-elected to Congress several times, serving until March 3, 1879. He was the longest-serving Black Congressman until the 1950s when William L. Dawson broke Rainey’s record.

While in Congress during Reconstruction, Rainey consistently supported legislation designed to protect the civil rights of black Americans – especially those living in the post-Civil War South. He advocated passage of the 1872 Ku Klux Klan Act to rid the south of the organization. The act was signed into law by President Grant. Concerning the need for this act, Rainey stated:

“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.”

He also supported a civil rights bill that was sponsored by Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, which outlawed racial discrimination on juries, in schools, on transportation, and in public accommodations. The amnesty bill passed in 1874 and the civil rights bill was enacted in 1875. He also was an advocate in Congress for Chinese and American Indian rights.

In May 1874 he would become the first black American to preside as Speaker pro tempore over the House. He also 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 would win reelection in 1876 against the Democratic candidate, John Smythe Richardson. Richardson would challenge the results of the election based on the grounds of intimidation of white voters by the federal soldiers and black militia that guarded the voting booths around the state. The challenge was rejected.

But Richardson ran again against Rainey two years later – this time as Reconstruction was coming to a slow and painful ending. This time he won, replacing Rainey in Congress on March 3, 1879. Reconstruction was over, and the whites regained political control of South Carolina.

Rainey returned to his home in Georgetown, South Carolina. He was appointed as an Internal Revenue agent in South Carolina on May 22, 1879, serving until July 15, 1881. Moving back to Washington, D.C., he was involved in banking and a railroad. He retired due to illness in 1886, moving back to Georgetown.

Rainey died in Georgetown on August 1, 1887, at the age of fifty-five. He was buried in the Baptist Cemetery in Georgetown.

He was a unique mixture of compassion and hard-headed reality. A successful businessman, he conducted himself with honor during a time when many in politics were solely seeking personal gain. He would be honored 118 years after his death when a portrait of him was unveiled and displayed in the Capitol in Washington, D.C., becoming the first portrait of a black legislator to be displayed in the Capitol. Perhaps his words, spoken to the Congress, best sums up Rainey’s post-Civil War efforts and beliefs:

“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.”

WEB RESOURCES:

Bella Online
Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress
Black Americans in Congress
Black Past
Find-A-Grave
News In History
Online 1911 Encyclopedia
South Carolina Department of Archives and History
South Carolina Encyclopedia
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCE:

Photo of Rainey, Library of Congress
Photo of Rainey seated, Library of Congress
Rainey Home, SC Dept. of Archives and History
Portrait as a Congressman, House of Representatives
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July 7: “Nothing between my soul and my Savior…”

Do you know who this is?
-He was a founding father of American Gospel music
-He was known as the ‘people’s pastor’.
-He was largely self-educated.

Raised with slaves in Worchester County in the pre-Civil War border state of Maryland, considered free because his parents were a slave father and free mother, he would become the self-educated minister of a 10,000 member multi-racial Methodist Church – in an era where most churches were segregated based on race.

Charles Albert Tindley was born on the Joseph Brindell farm near Berlin, Maryland, on July 7, 1851 to Charles and Hester Miller Tindley. When he was less than five years old his mother died, and he would be raised by his sister. Because economic conditions were poor for the African Americans in the mid-19th Century, Tindley was ‘hired out’ as a young boy by his father, receiving pay for working in the fields alongside slaves – providing young Tindley with the experiences of working on a slave plantation, and his family with a much needed income.

As a youth Tindley would be denied the opportunity for an education. First: he was in the field helping his family during the day. Secondly, although he was considered ‘free born’, schools in his area were for white students – so he taught himself how to read and write.

When he was about seventeen, Tindley married Daisy Henry. He would move to Philadelphia with his family in order to better support them. Working during the day as a janitor and attending school at night, he strove to achieve the American ideal. He once commented “I made a rule to learn at least one new thing—a thing I did not know the day before—each day.”

Tindley had varied educational experiences. He put himself through night school. He earned a Divinity Degree through a correspondence course. He never graduated from a college or seminary. In his seeking the source of truth from the Bible, he studied Greek at the Boston School of Theology. In order to better understand the Old Testament, Tindley studied Hebrew through a synagogue in Philadelphia. He would ultimately be awarded two honorary doctorate degrees: one from North Carolina, the other from Maryland.

He was employed as a janitor from 1880 to 1885 at the Bainbridge Street Methodist Church in Philadelphia. The same church granted him a license to preach – and he would be assigned there as its pastor in 1902 after pasturing in Delaware and New Jersey. The church had 130 African American members when Tindley was appointed as its pastor, and the congregation would reach 10,000 members under his guidance – and would be a multiracial congregation that included African Americans, Europeans, Jews and Hispanics. He led his church in ministering to Philadelphia’s poor – by establishing soup kitchens and a clothing ministry - as well as advocating civil rights in the early 20th century. As a tribute to the accomplishments of the man who led the church for over thirty years, Bainbridge was renamed Tindley Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1920s - over the objections of Tindley.

Tindley was preached powerful messages, and – although technically musically illiterate - began writing hymns that reflected his background – music that later became known as gospel music, which was based on feelings engendered by a history of oppression. He would dictate the words and tunes to a transcriber who would write down the formal musical notes and words. Eventually he would write over forty-five hymns, and while he apparently did not intend for his music to be sung congregationally, some of his hymns wound up in the Methodist hymnal and are sung around the world today. Perhaps one of the most famous of his hymns is “Stand By Me”.

When the storms of life are raging, stand by me;
When the world is tossing me, like a ship upon the sea,
Thou who rulest wind and water, stand by me.

Other well-known hymns by Tindley include “We’ll Understand Better, By and By”, “Lord, I’ve Tried”, and “I Shall Overcome”. Many believe that the words and intent of “I Shall Overcome” was the basis of the anthem for the Civil Rights movement, “We Shall Overcome”.

While many of his sermons are lost, the messages found in his songs remain. These messages are based on his past, and the events occurring in his life, ringing true to us today – over seventy years after the death of their author.

From “We’ll Understand Better, By and By”:
We are often destitute of the things that life demands,
Want of food and want of shelter, thirsty hills and barren lands;
We are trusting in the Lord, and according to God's Word,
We will understand it better by and by.

Or “Nothing Between”, written in 1906 when the church was negotiating to buy a new site for its growing congregation.

Nothing between my soul and my Savior,
naught of this world’s delusive dream;
I have renounced all sinful pleasure;
Jesus is mine, there’s nothing between.
Nothing between my soul and my Savior,
so that his blessed face may be seen;
nothing preventing the least of his favor;
keep the way clear! Let nothing between.

Tindley would pass away on July 26, 1933, from a gangrene infection in his foot. He was 82 years old. It was at the deepest point of the Great Depression when Tindley was buried in Eden Memorial Cemetery in Collingdale, Pennsylvania, and the congregation could not afford a marker for his grave. The situation was rectified in 2002 when 3000 members of his church met in a memorial to Tindley that met, provided a headstone, and remembered Dr. Tindley.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:

There are no biographies of Charles Tindley in our local library.

WEB RESOURCES:

Christian History Timeline
Cyber Hymnal
Lower Shore
Preparing for Eternity
Taylor House Museum
Thinkquest
United Methodist Portal
Wikipedia
World Wide Faith News

PHOTO SOURCES:

T 01. Charles Tindley portrait, Find a Grave, by Curtis Jackson
T 02. Charles A. Tindley, Cyberhymnal
T 03. I Shall Overcome songsheet, Thinkquest
T 04. Tindley Memorial, Find a Grave, by Curtis Jackson
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March 31: He Boxed and Lived On His Own Terms

Do you know who this is?
-He was born to former slaves in Texas.
-He was the background cause of race riots throughout the country in 1910.
-He enjoyed racing cars.

He was an African-American man who had succeeded in a white-dominated sport during a time when things like that were against the moral stance of white society. He became one of the first ‘modern celebrities’ in his lifestyle. He was the first African-American Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World.

Arthur John (Jack) Johnson was born on March 31, 1878, in Galveston, Texas, as the second of former slaves Henry and Tina ‘Tiny’ Johnson’s six children. Jack would quit school after the fifth grade to go to work. He eventually wound up on the Galveston shipping docks, building his muscles, toughness, rough-housing fighting, and determination to succeed.

Jack would take his rough and tumble experiences into boxing – first as a sparring partner, then to participate in “battle royal” fights at private clubs. This was a fight where a number of fighters were brought together to fight until only one remained standing. That winner won the where cash prizes that were offered.

He began boxing professionally in 1897, and in his first fight knocked out Jim Rocks. Boxing was illegal in Texas, and Jack was arrested in 1901. After his release from jail, Jack left the state.

By 1902, Jack had won at least 50 fights against both white and black opponents. On February 3, 1903, he defeated “Denver” Ed Martin for the World Colored Heavyweight Championship. He wanted to in the full title of Heavyweight Champion, but the current champion – James J. Jeffries – refused to face him. Jeffries would retire undefeated in 1905 – but would come out of retirement five years later to face Jack.

This refusal was a part of the social situation in the early 20th century. America held the heavyweight boxing championship in awe, and the white-dominated society felt that blacks were not worthy to compete for it. Jack, however, was persistent – fighting and defeating former champion Bob Fitzsimmons in July 1907 – and knocking him out in two rounds. Jack was a contender.

On December 26, 1908, the first white – black heavyweight boxing championship match was held in Sydney, Australia between Jack and Canadian heavyweight champion of the world, Tommy Burns. The fight only occurred because Jack had followed Burns around the world, challenging and mocking him – essentially forcing him into a fight. The match lasted 14 rounds, was dominated by Jack, and ended in a TKO in favor of Jack. The camera’s were stopped just before the end of the fight in order not to show Burns’ defeat.

The boxing world had a new Heavyweight Champion of the World – and it wasn’t happy about it. Immediately a search began for a “great white hope” to return the title to the ‘superior white race’. A number of fighters tried – and failed. The best was former heavyweight champions Jeffries – who would come out of retirement for the ‘fight of the century’, held before 22,000 spectators in Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910.

Jeffries was knocked to the mat twice during the match, and in the 15th round his team called it quits – supposedly to avoid a knock out of the former champion. As a result of the fight, many critics of Jack’s fighting ability were silenced; and African American exuberance spread throughout the country. Black poet William Waring Cuney captured the exuberant African American reaction in his poem, "My Lord, What a Morning":

O my Lord
What a morning,
O my Lord,
What a feeling,
When Jack
Johnson
Turned Jim Jeffries'
Snow-white face
to the ceiling.

Another result was a spate of riots that occurred throughout the US as the white reacted in anger and violence to the news of the defeat of their great white hope – and the racial message it brought. The whites would try to subdue the celebrations being held by the blacks of the cities. Riots occurred in 25 states and 50 cities, resulting in the death of at least 23 blacks and 2 whites. Hundreds were injured. The Texas legislature banned films of Jack’s victories over fights for fear of more riots.

On April 15, 1915, Jack lost the title to Jess Willard in a bout in Havana, Cuba, before a crowd of 25,000. The fight lasted 26 rounds, resulting in a KO of Jack. It was one of three times he would be knocked out in the ring during his career.

As champion – and after – Jack would become a pioneer celebrity athlete: endorsing products, holding numerous radio and newspaper interviews, and indulging in expensive hobbies. Fast and expensive cars and clothing; jewelry and furs for the women in his life; and his marriage to white women challenged conventions regarding the social and economic "place" of African Americans in American society and outraged the moral stance of the white community. He married Brooklyn socialite Etta Duryea in 1910. She grew despondent because she was ostracized from society and committed suicide in 1911. He married his white secretary Lucille Cameron in December 1911. She would divorce him in 1924 for infidelity. In 1925 he married Irene Pineau, who would outlive him. He would have no children by any of his marriages.

In 1913 Jack was charged and convicted by an all-white jury with violating the Mann Act, which outlawed the transportation of women across state lines for purposes of prostitution. He was released on bond, pending appeal, and fled the country disguised as a member of a black baseball team - going first to Canada, then Europe, where he continued to box. After losing a title bout in Havana in 1915, he would ultimately return to the United States from Mexico in 1920 – turning himself in to authorities. He was imprisoned in the Federal prision at Leavenworth, Kansas for eight months – during which time he invented the Johnson Wrench.

He would box in exhibition matches after his release, but retired in 1928. He would stage exhibition matches again during World War II to raise money for the war effort.

Jack would die at the age of 68 in a car crash at Franklinton, North Carolina. His accident occurred after he angrily left a diner that refused to serve him because of his race. He was buried next to Etta Duryea Johnson at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Later, Irene Pineau was buried next to him as well.

Jack would be inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1954. The film of the 1910 Johnson-Jeffries fight was deemed as ‘historically significant’ in 2005, and put in the National Film Registry. Finally, sixty-two years after his death, the US Congress passes a resolution in September 2008 recommending that the President grant a pardon for Jack’s 1913 conviction, acknowledging the racist overtones of the conviction as well as recognizing his contributions to boxing.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:

Ward, Geoffrey C: Unforgivable Blackness : The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

WEB RESOURCES:

Bio

Black Past

Famous Texans

Jack Johnson About Inventors

PBS
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

01. Boxing pose: Library of Congress, Digital ID USZ62-29331

02. Boxing pose, 1907: Library of Congress, Digital ID: ichicdn s006116
02. Sydney Stadium during Johnson-Burns match, 1908: Wikipedia
03. Johnson-Jeffries Fight, 1910: Wikipedia

04. Joliet Courthouse Steps, 1925: Library of Congress, Digital ID: ichicdn s065687b

For Jan. 26th: “The air is the only place free from prejudices”

Do you know who this is?
-She was known as “Queen Bess” and “Brave Bessie”
-She was the first African American woman pilot to receive a pilot’s license
-Every year on the anniversary of her death pilots put flowers on her grave

Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, on January 26th, 1892, as the tenth of thirteen children. Her parents – George and Susan Coleman – were sharecroppers. Her father was a Native American, and her mother was an African American. They later moved to Waxahachie, Texas, where she and her family picked cotton, and she helped with laundry for her mother’s customers.

Beginning at the age of six, Bessie would attend a one-room segregated rural school, walking four miles a day in order to attend. She excelled in math, loved to read, and would complete all eight grades of the one-room school. She often borrowed books from a travelling library to read and enlarge her world.

In 1901 her father – tiring of the racism of early 20th Century America, decided to return to the Cherokee Indian reservation in Oklahoma. His wife decided to stay in Waxahachie, and the family was split up. Bessie stayed with her mother and siblings in Waxahachie.

Bessie would enroll in the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now Langston University, Langston, Oklahoma) when she was 18, but quit attending after her first term there because of lack of money to finance her continued education. She moved to back to Waxahachie, then in 1915 she moved to Chicago, Illinois, living with two of her brothers and securing a job as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop.

Bessie would find her role in life as she listened to pilots returning from World War I relating their experiences and reliving the excitement of flying through their stories. Her dream to fly was also fueled by a challenge from her brother John, a World War I veteran, who told her that French women were better than American women because they could fly airplanes. She tried to receive training in the US, but was turned down because she was Black and she was a woman. So Bessie, with the backing of some influential Black businessmen in Chicago, went to France, where she arrived on Nov. 20, 1920. In France, Bessie attended the well-known Caudron Brothers' School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France, learning the skills of being a pilot on a French Nieuport 82 trainer aircraft. Within seven months she was successful in becoming the first African American woman in the world to receive an international pilot’s license. She continued to improve her skills with private lessons from a French ace, finally sailing for America in September 1921.

Bessie had two major goals after achieving her pilot’s license: To make a living flying and to establish the first African American flight school. The reason for the second goal was because:

“I decided blacks should not have to experience the difficulties I had faced, so I decided to open a flying school and teach other black women to fly.”

Commercial pilots did not exist in 1921, so the only way that Bessie could make money by flying was to perform exhibition flying - which was a dangerous, stunt filled, acrobatic style of flying known as barnstorming. Despite her international pilot’s license, she still could not get anyone in the United States to give her training in this area, so she returned to Europe for more extensive training in February, 1922. Returning later that year, she would participate in her first air show on September 23, 1922, at Glenn Curtis Field in New York.

She soon became a flying sensation and media favorite. She was soon billed as “the world’s greatest woman pilot”, and was travelling the nation. She most often flew the Curtis “Jenny” biplane as well as surplus World War I aircraft, and it was a stalled engine on a Jenny that would cause Bessie’s first accident – a crash which broke her leg and some ribs, and took her a year to fully recover from.

Bessie began performing again full time in 1925, touring a number of cities, including the town she grew up in, Waxahachie, Texas. Here she performed with one condition: while there was segregated seating, she insisted that there be only one gate where both Blacks and whites would enter into the airfield. Her condition was met – a small victory in the early battle against segregation.

Her aviation career would end tragically on April 30 1926, while preparing for a show in Jacksonville, Florida. She was riding in the passenger seat of her “Jenny” airplane while her mechanic William Willis piloted the aircraft. She was not wearing her seat belt at the time so she could lean over the edge of the cockpit and scout potential parachute landing spots for the parachute jump she was planning on performing the next day. The Jenny was put into a planned dive, then suddenly dropped into a steep nosedive and flipped over, catapulting her to her death after a 500-foot fall. Willis – strapped in to his seat – died when the plane crashed in a nearby field. After the accident, investigators discovered that Willis had lost control of the airplane because of a loose wrench which had jammed the plane’s instruments.

5000 mourners would attend her memorial service on May 2nd, 1926 – honoring the aviation pioneer before her body was shipped to Chicago for burial in Lincoln Cemetary.

Bessie’s career in the public eye what short, but spectacular. She would overcome the challenges of race and gender discrimination to become the first African American woman to earn a pilot’s license, fighting segregation when she could by using her celebrity status to try to affect change, and having a dream – which she could never completely fulfill herself – of establishing a flight school for African Americans.

Her legacy and her dream continued after her death. She heightened interest in flying by showing both African Americans and women that difficulties could be overcome. As she once said, “I refused to take no for an answer.”

Many since Bessie have adopted that motto.

Local Library Resources:
Nikki Grimes: Talkin' 'bout Bessie: the Story of Aviator Bessie Coleman
Louise Borden: Fly High!: the Story of Bessie Coleman (Juvenile)

Reeve Lindbergh: Nobody Owns the Sky: the Story of "Brave Bessie" Coleman (Juvenile)

Web Resources:
Centennial of Flight essay
PBS American Experience “Flygirls”
Smithsonian
Wikipedia