Oscar Stanton De Priest
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| Oscar Stanton De Priest | |
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| In office March 1929 - March 1931, March 1931 - March 1933, March 1933 - January 1935 |
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| Preceded by | Martin B. Madden |
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| Succeeded by | Arthur W. Mitchell |
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| Born | March 9, 1871 Florence, Alabama |
| Died | May 12, 1951 Chicago, Illinois |
| Political party | Republican |
Oscar Stanton De Priest (Florence, Alabama, 9 March 1871 - Chicago, Illinois, 12 May 1951) was an American lawmaker and civil rights advocate.
De Priest moved with his parents to Kansas in 1878, and was raised in Salina. After working as a painter and decorator, De Priest moved to Chicago in 1889, where he became a successful businessman as a real estate broker. From 1904-1908 he was a member of the board of commissioners of Cook County, Illinois, and then served on the Chicago City Council from 1915-1917.
In 1928, he became the first African American elected to Congress in the 20th century, representing the 1st Congressional District of Illinois (the South Side of Chicago) as a Republican. During his three consecutive terms (1928-1935) as the only black representative in Congress, De Priest introduced several anti-discrimination bills. His 1933 amendment barring discrimination in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Roosevelt. A second anti-lynching bill failed, even though it would not have made lynching a federal crime. A third proposal, a bill to permit a transfer of jurisdiction if a defendant believed he or she could not get a fair trial because of race or religion, would be passed by another Congress in another era.
Civil rights activists criticized De Priest for opposing federal aid to the needy, but they applauded him for speaking in the South despite death threats. They also praised De Priest for telling an Alabama senator he was not big enough to prevent him from dining in the Senate restaurant and for defending the right of Howard University students to eat in the House restaurant. De Priest took the House restaurant issue to a special bipartisan House committee. In a three month-long heated debate, the Republican minority argued that the restaurant's discriminatory practice violated 14th Amendment rights to equal access. The Democratic majority skirted the issue by claiming that the restaurant was not open to the public, and the House restaurant remained segregated. De Priest was defeated in 1934 by Democrat Arthur W. Mitchell, who was also an African American. He was again elected to the Chicago city council in 1943 and served until 1947.
His house in Chicago is a National Historic Landmark.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- National Park Service
- His official Congressional biography
- Day, S. Davis. "Herbert Hoover and Racial Politics: The De Priest Incident". Journal of Negro History 65 (Winter 1980): 6-17
- Rudwick, Elliott M. "Oscar De Priest and the Jim Crow Restaurant in the U.S. House of Representatives". Journal of Negro Education 35 (Winter 1966): 77-82.
| Preceded by Martin B. Madden |
U.S. Representative of Illinois's 1st Congressional District 1931–1935 |
Succeeded by Arthur W. Mitchell |
