Richard Harvey Cain (12 April 1825-18 January 1887) was a member of the US House of Representatives (R-SC) from 4 March 1873 to 3 March 1875 and from SC-2 from 4 March 1877 to 3 March 1879 (succeeding Charles W. Buttz and preceding Michael P. O'Connor).
Biography[]
Richard Harvey Cain was born in Greenbrier County, West Virginia in 1825 to an African-American father and a Cherokee mother, and he was raised in Gallipolis, Ohio. He worked as a barber in Galena, Illinois and as a Methodist minister in Hannibal, Missouri; Muscatine, Iowa; and Brooklyn, New York before migrating to the American South during Reconstruction. He presided over Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and he edited the South Carolina Leader before becoming active in Republican politics. Cain served in the US House of Representatives from 1873 to 1875 and from 1877 to 1879, and he later became an AME Church bishop in Washington DC and died in 1887.