Richard H. Cain

Richard Harvey Cain (April 12, 1825 – January 18, 1887) was an American minister,

Cain was born to a black father and a Cherokee mother in Greenbrier County, Virginia, which is now in West Virginia. He was raised in Gallipolis, Ohio; Ohio state was a free state where he was allowed to read and write. He attended Wilberforce University and divinity school in Hannibal, Missouri. The American Civil War broke out while he was at Wilberforce. He and 115 students from the mostly black university attempted to enlist in the Union Army but were refused.^[1]

Career

Cain worked as a barber in Galena, Illinois, and worked on steamboats along the Ohio River before he migrated south.

He had been licensed to preach for the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844. His first assignment was in Hannibal, Missouri. In 1848, frustrated by the segregationist policies of the Methodists, he joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church, an independent black denomination started in Philadelphia. By 1859, he became a deacon in Muscatine, Iowa. In 1861, Cain was called as a pastor at the Bridge Street Church in Brooklyn, New York. In 1862, he was ordained as an elder and remained at the Brooklyn church until 1865.^[1]

After the Civil War, Cain moved to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865 as superintendent of AME missions and presided over the Emmanuel Church in that city. The AME Church attracted tens of thousands of converts to its denomination very rapidly.^[1]

Cain became active in politics, serving as a delegate to the

In 1877, while advocating in Congress for mail service to West African Colonies, Cain became a member of the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company. In 1880, Cain was elected and consecrated a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church; he served the episcopal district which comprised Louisiana and Texas. He helped found Paul Quinn College and served as its president until 1884.^[1]

Cain then moved to Washington, D.C., where he served as AME bishop over the Mid-Atlantic and New England States. He died in Washington on January 18, 1887, and was buried in Graceland Cemetery there, but may have been removed to Woodlawn Cemetery about a decade later, when Graceland closed and many of its interments were reburied in Woodlawn.^[2][3]

See also

• List of African-American United States representatives
• List of Native Americans in the United States Congress

References