GEORGETOWN – Lorna Rainey carries her great-grandfather’s legacy while working at the helm of a large talent management company, one of the few companies owned by an African American woman.
She is a pioneer in a family known to be the first.
For fans of Georgetown and American history, the name Rainey stands out for its political legend. Yes, Lorna Rainey is the great-granddaughter of Representative Joseph Rainey of South Carolina, who in 1870 became the first African American to serve in the United States House of Representatives.
“I am a descendant of greatness. I am a descendant of a determined and self-taught man. And I feel that if he succeeded, there is no excuse for me not to succeed now, ”said Lorna of her ancestor’s memory.
Joseph, born in Georgetown in the 1830s, is the epitome of a political pioneer – a freed slave who served in the legislative branch of a government that would not fully assert his right to vote and equal treatment before the law for almost another century. As a representative, he spoke out against white supremacy and intimidation, defended civil rights and promoted public education.
Lorna Rainey, who lives in New York, learned about her family’s history from her aunt Olive, Joseph’s daughter. Contained in the family’s history was more information about who Joseph was during his life, information unknown even by scholars at the time.
“When I was 3 years old, my Aunt Olive would put me on her lap every time I saw her and tell me her father’s stories and the things he achieved and the things he went through before and during the time he was at the conference. I grew up with that knowledge, ”said Lorna. “I always knew who I was and no matter what, nobody could take that away from me.”
But for a long time, Lorna said that few people were interested in learning more about that of the first black politicians at the national level. She sometimes sought out historians to offer a view, but she often never received an answer. It was also difficult to find information beyond a paragraph about it in books and online.
“All of that started to change about twenty years ago,” she said. “We had very brave people in our nation’s history and due to the distorted interest, we glorify people we shouldn’t have glorified and ignore the people we should have been paying attention to.”
The South Carolina Congressional delegation wants to pay tribute to Joseph even more, renaming the Georgetown Post on Charlotte Street in his honor. All members of the South Carolina delegation to the House of Representatives, regardless of the party, approved the name change.
“I never heard of Rep. Rainey until I was at Congress and I saw a portrait of him on a stairway to the House of Representatives,” said Rep. Tom Rice, R-7, who presented the resolution to rename the post office in 10 from December. “I did more research on him and was very proud of the fact that the first African American representative in the history of our country came right here from our district.”
In recent years, as a national conversation broke out about who is worthy of being honored in public memory, Joseph’s prominence has increased. A portrait of him is now hanging in the congress halls and a room in the capital bears his name, a park in Georgetown also bears his name, as well as a historic landmark in Bermuda and some museums have information about him so that visitors can learn more.
But University of South Carolina history professor Bobby Donaldson said the amount of recognition Rainey gets does not match his major contributions to the history of this country.
The main reason for this, Donaldson argued, is how Reconstruction in the South is often taught as a failed time in history, rather than a time when African American leaders briefly gained political prominence before a reaction that would take decades to be resolved. overcome.
Reconstruction was the period after the Civil War that technically lasted until 1876. New laws were imposed on the South in an effort to reform the society that recently tolerated slavery.
There is a popular and widespread myth in southern culture that this period was a dark time, but it was actually a promising time for black residents.
“For 10 or 12 years, the reconstruction worked. African-Americans were able to seek public office and represent the population. It was a powerful constituent, ”said Brent Morris, professor at USC Beaufort and director of the Institute for the Study of the Age of Reconstruction. “Reconstruction was not that dark period, it was a chance for America to fulfill the ideals established in 1776.
Although Joseph was a member of Congress, many white Southerners were opposed to his leadership. Attempts to discredit Joseph happened during his lifetime and in the early history books. Many of the people he represented hated him for the color of his skin.
“During his time, despite his power and influence, Joseph Rainey was the target of attacks, the target of insults and threats and talked about it at the congress,” said Donaldson.
In fact, Joseph was threatened directly by the Ku Klux Klan, prompting him to relocate his family to the north, while continuing his term in South Carolina.
“He tried to guarantee the safety of the family because at different times in his career he was threatened by the KKK for being an avid opponent of them and their views and their tactics of fear and the murder of people of color. He would always use his position, his political capital, to make sure the spotlight was the worms they were, ”said Lorna.
Joseph lost his election in 1870, mainly due to voter intimidation and disenfranchisement, when Reconstruction was ending and the new Jim Crow era was emerging. The South regressed rapidly with fewer protections for African Americans than during Reconstruction and, a few years later, saw the vast loss of black voters.
“This was a period when America lost a piece of itself. It has lost the true expansion of its democracy, ”said Morris. “The South was back to what it was before the Civil War.”
Donaldson believes that renaming the post office comes at an ironic moment. Before entering Congress, Joseph helped to rewrite the state constitution that helped him seek a higher position. Rainey believed in expanding civil rights and expanding public educational opportunities, while facing electoral fraud and intimidation in his district to prevent people from voting for him.
He also had to deal with terrorism and the value of black life.
“Rainey is someone I would call the founder of South Carolina,” added Donaldson. “So it is an amazing irony that this is happening now because for a long time your contributions have been marginalized and footnotes to history.”
Some scholars, especially African-American writers, have discussed the importance of Joseph for decades, but these narratives have not been widely disseminated or taught in general in schools, Morris said. Morris said that much of his work involves helping people unlearn what they think happened during Reconstruction, while teaching the important stories of the time.
Donaldson added that some reconstruction history books don’t even mention Joseph Rainey’s name, the threats he faced or the many benefits that Reconstruction had for African Americans in the south.
Lorna said the stories she heard from her aunt contradicted the official history books. For example, she learned that her great-grandfather escaped slavery by seeking refuge in Bermuda before her great-grandmother, although many historians argue that they left at the same time.
The family story tells that Joseph hoped daily that the abolitionists would fulfill his promise to free his wife, and one day the whole family was reunited.
“I knew the facts sitting on my great aunt’s knees,” said Lorna. “One day he went down to the pier, looked and there she was. It’s a love story unlike any other and it makes my heart race. ”
Donaldson and Lorna worked together to produce a more complete and accurate story of Joseph. The archives contain many of his letters and news articles showing his political beliefs, but other pieces, such as details of his childhood and in which Baptist church in Georgetown he is buried, remain unknown.
After the pandemic, Donaldson hopes to travel to Georgetown to continue putting the pieces of Joseph Rainey’s full story together. Smithsonian Magazine published an article he wrote about the representative with the help of Lorna, who is also working on a documentary about his great-grandfather.
Donaldson, Morris and Lorna would like to see more complete stories taught in the American schools of Joseph Rainey, his contemporaries and the time of Reconstruction in general.
“Renaming a building is always a first step, but you don’t want the name Joseph Rainey to be etched into the stone and that’s where the conversation stops,” said Donaldson. “I believe that, given its critical role, we must reconstruct the history of our state and review how we interpret Reconstruction.”
But naming the post office is a start, and Lorna was honored to hear the news when contacted by the Post and Courier Myrtle Beach & Georgetown Times. She believes that everyone needs heroes, people to model themselves. She has always had one and hopes that, as more people learn about her great-grandfather, they will find inspiration in his story.
Like her aunt Oliver, Lorna Rainey decided to tell her two children about her great-great-grandfather. She imagines that she feels the same way as her aunt, keeping the legacy of Rep. Joseph Rainey alive in the family.
“I feel exactly how she probably did. She felt it was her duty to tell me, her obligation to make me understand the seriousness of what she was saying. I did the same with my children. “
