Facts on 19 October
1870 - First Blacks elected to the House of Representatives.

On this date in 1870, First Blacks elected to the House of Representatives. Black Republicans won three of the four congressional seats in South Carolina: Joseph H. Rainey, Robert C. Delarge and Robert B. Elliott. Rainey was elected to an unexpired term in the Forty-first Congress and was the first Black seated in the House.

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