House Honors a Black Pioneer

In 1870 Joseph Rainey became the first black person elected to the House of Representatives. On Wednesday, he became the first to have his portrait hung in the House.

The oil painting of the South Carolina congressman was unveiled before many members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and family descendants.

Rainey’s painting, Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) said, corrects a situation in which there were “hundreds of portraits on the House side and not one reflects a person of color.”

Rainey, born into slavery in 1832, served in the House from 1870 to 1879, working to advance the civil rights of newly freed slaves.

The portrait project was led by Fattah and Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Fine Arts Board, as part of efforts to better represent women and minorities among the more than 300 portraits in the Capitol complex. The artist is Simmie Knox, who also did the official White House portraits of former President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Rainey was one of the few blacks elected to seats representing parts of the former Confederacy after the Civil War. There were no blacks in Congress for the three-decade period before 1929, and as late as 1963 there were three. Currently there are 42 blacks in the 435-member House and one black senator.

The Senate in 2002 dedicated a portrait of Blanche Bruce of Mississippi, the first black to serve a full term in the Senate, from 1875 to 1881.

The House on Wednesday also approved a request by the state of New Mexico to place in the Capitol a statue of Po’Pay, a Pueblo Indian who lead a revolt against the Spanish in 1680. It is to be unveiled today.