Government
(b. June 21, 1832, Georgetown, S.C., U.S.–d. Aug. 2, 1887, Georgetown), former American slave, the first black to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives (1870-79).
The son of a barber who bought the family’s freedom, Rainey received some private schooling and took up his father’s trade in Charleston, S.C. During the American Civil War he was forced to work on the fortifications in Charleston harbour but managed to escape to the West Indies, where he remained until the end of the war (1865). Upon his return to South Carolina, he was a delegate to the state constitutional convention (1868) and served briefly in the state Senate before his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1870.
He was reelected four times, the longest tenure in the House of any black during the Reconstruction era. While in office he dedicated himself to the passage of civil-rights legislation, pressing the interests not only of blacks but of other minorities such as the Indians and the Chinese in California. Upon leaving the House in 1879, he was appointed U.S. internal revenue agent of South Carolina. He resigned that post in 1881 to engage in banking and brokerage enterprises in Washington, D.C.
Government
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1966?68), b. Washington, D.C. He was successively adviser to the Secretary of the Interior (1933?37), special assistant with the Housing Authority (1937?40), and an administrative assistant with the National Defense Advisory Commission (1940). During World War II he held several offices concerned with mobilizing black labor. After holding various teaching assignments and working with the John Hay Whitney Foundation, Weaver was (1955?59) New York state rent commissioner. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the post of administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him head of the newly created Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); he was the first black to hold a cabinet post. After leaving HUD he was (1969?70) president of Bernard M. Baruch College and professor of Urban Affairs at Hunter College (1970?78). His works include Negro Labor: A National Problem (1946), The Negro Ghetto (1948), The Urban Complex: Human Values in Urban Life (1964), and Dilemmas of Urban America (1965).
Government
(b. March 15, 1809, Petersburg, Va., U.S.–d. Feb. 24, 1876, Monrovia, Liberia), American-born, first president of Liberia (1848-56).
A native of Virginia, Roberts was the son of free “blacks” whose heritage was more than seven-eighths white. At the age of 20 he immigrated to Liberia with his mother and younger brothers, became a merchant, and also became an unofficial aide to the white governor of the colony, Thomas H. Buchanan, a member of the American Colonization Society, which sought the return of American freedmen to Africa. On Buchanan’s death in 1842, Roberts was appointed the first black governor of the colony.
In efforts to establish the political and economic stability of the colony, Roberts and other colonists sought treaties with native tribes and recognition from foreign powers. In 1847 they proclaimed the new republic of Liberia; Roberts was elected the first president. In 1849, during a visit to England, he secured British recognition of Liberia as a sovereign nation; and in 1852, in another trip to continental Europe, he acquired recognition from other powers.
