Oscar Stanton De Priest
Oscar De Priest | |
---|---|
Arthur W. Mitchell | |
Member of the Chicago City Council | |
In office 1943–1947 | |
Preceded by | Benjaim A. Grant |
Succeeded by | Archibald Carey Jr. |
Constituency | 3rd Ward |
In office 1915–1917 | |
Succeeded by | Louis Anderson |
Constituency | 2nd Ward |
Member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners | |
In office 1904–1908 | |
Preceded by | Archibald Carey Jr. |
Personal details | |
Born | Florence, Alabama, U.S. | March 9, 1871
Died | May 12, 1951 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | (aged 80)
Resting place | Graceland Cemetery |
Political party | Republican |
Spouse | |
Children | 2 |
Oscar Stanton De Priest (March 9, 1871 – May 12, 1951) was an American politician and
Born in Alabama to
In Congress in the early 1930s, he spoke out against
Early life
De Priest was born in 1871 in
In 1878, the year after Reconstruction had ended and federal troops been withdrawn from the region, the De Priests left Alabama for Salina, Kansas. Violence had increased in Alabama as whites were restoring white supremacy: the elder De Priest had to save his friend, former U.S. Representative James T. Rapier, from a lynch mob, and a black man was killed on their doorstep.[2] The boy Oscar attended local schools in Salina.[2]
Career
Business
De Priest studied bookkeeping at the
Politics
From 1904 to 1908, De Priest was a member of the board of commissioners of Cook County, Illinois.[3]
De Priest was elected in 1914 to the Chicago City Council, serving from 1915 to 1917 as alderman from the 2nd Ward, on the South Side. He was Chicago's first black alderman. In 1917 De Priest was indicted for alleged graft and resigned from the City Council.[1] He hired nationally known Clarence Darrow as his defense attorney and was acquitted.[3] He was succeeded in office by Louis B. Anderson.[4]
In 1919, De Priest ran unsuccessfully for alderman as a member of the People's Movement Club, a political organization he founded. In a few years, De Priest's black political organization became the most powerful of many in Chicago, and he became the top black politician under Chicago Republican mayor William Hale Thompson.
In 1928, when Republican congressman
DePriest's 1933 amendment barring discrimination in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a program of the New Deal to employ people across the country in building infrastructure, was passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His anti-lynching bill (House Joint Resolution 171, in 1933[7]) failed due to opposition by the white Democrats of the Solid South, although it would not have made lynching a federal crime. (Previous anti-lynching bills had also failed to pass the Senate, which was dominated by the South since its disenfranchisement of blacks at the turn of the century.)[citation needed] He presented the legislation with a long and detailed speech in which he read newspaper reports and legal opinions: he included the names of victims of lynchings from 1927 on, and provided graphic details of these murders.[8] 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, was passed by a later Congress.
De Priest defended the right of students of
Mostly aligned with the political right, De Priest generally opposed liberal federal programs under the New Deal, instead favoring increased initiatives on the state or local level.
In 1929, De Priest made national news when
De Priest appointed Benjamin O. Davis Jr. to the United States Military Academy at a time when the only African-American line officer in the Army was Davis's father.
By the early 1930s, De Priest's popularity waned because he continued to oppose higher taxes on the rich and fought
Personal life
De Priest married the former Jessie L. Williams (September 3, 1870 – March 31, 1961).[12] They had two sons together: Laurence W. (1899 – July 28, 1916), who died at the age of 16.[13] and Oscar Stanton De Priest, Jr. (May 24, 1906 – November 8, 1983)[14][15] A great-grandson of Oscar De Priest, Jr., Philip R. DePriest, became the administrator of his estate after his grandmother's death in 1992. This included his great-grandfather's Oscar Stanton De Priest House, now a National Historic Landmark, which still held his locked political office. This had not been touched since about 1951. This great-grandson has been working to restore the office and house, and assessing the political archives—"a veritable treasure trove."[16]
Legacy and honors
- The Oscar Stanton De Priest House in Chicago, at 45th and King Drive, has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and city landmark.[17]
Electoral history
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | Oscar DePriest | 24,479 | 47.8 | |
Democratic | Harry Baker | 20,664 | 40.3 | |
Independent | William Harrison | 5,861 | 11.4 | |
Independent | Benjamin W. Clayton | 123 | 0.2 | |
Independent | Edward L. Doty | 100 | 0.2 | |
Total votes | 51,227 | 100 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | Oscar DePriest (incumbent) | 17,103 | 70.5 | |
Republican | Roscoe Simmons | 5,049 | 20.8 | |
Republican | Harry G. Borland | 831 | 3.4 | |
Republican | Richard E. Parker | 799 | 3.3 | |
Republican | George Hodge | 494 | 2.0 | |
Total votes | 24,276 | 100 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | Oscar DePriest (incumbent) | 23,719 | 58.4 | |
Democratic | Harry Baker | 16,747 | 41.2 | |
Independent | George W. Harts | 68 | 0.2 | |
Independent | T. W. Chavers | 64 | 0.2 | |
Independent | Edward Turner | 44 | 0.1 | |
Total votes | 40,642 | 100 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | Oscar DePriest (incumbent) | 21,252 | 76.8 | |
Republican | Louis B. Anderson | 5,457 | 19.7 | |
Republican | James L. Scott | 979 | 3.5 | |
Total votes | 27,688 | 100 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | Oscar DePriest (incumbent) | 33,672 | 54.8 | |
Democratic | Harry Baker | 26,959 | 43.9 | |
Independent | Herbert Newton | 843 | 1.4 | |
Total votes | 61,474 | 100 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | Oscar DePriest (incumbent) | 18,054 | 94.6 | |
Republican | Chandler Owen | 1,034 | 5.4 | |
Total votes | 19,088 | 100 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Democratic | Arthur W. Mitchell | 27,963 | 53.0 | |
Republican | Oscar DePriest (incumbent) | 24,829 | 47.0 | |
Total votes | 52,792 | 100 |
See also
- List of African American firsts
- List of African-American United States representatives
- Oscar Stanton De Priest House
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h De Priest, Oscar Stanton. US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives. Retrieved January 29, 2022.
- ^ a b c Stokes-Hammond, Shelley. "Pathbreakers: Oscar Stanton DePriest and Jessie L. Williams DePriest". The White House Historical Association. Archived from the original on June 9, 2015. Retrieved May 31, 2015.
- ^ a b c d "Black Americans in Congress". United States: Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved December 11, 2009.
- ^ "The Common Council". Chicago Eagle. April 21, 1917. Retrieved May 16, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Taylor, Julius F. (May 13, 1922). "The Broad Ax". No. 34. Retrieved June 17, 2015.
- ^ The Union (Chicago, IL) March 6, 1930.
- ^ United States Congress (1957). Reports and Documents. Vol. 28. p. 37.
- ^ United States. Congress (1933). Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the Seventy-Third Congress. Vol. 77. pp. 2822–2827.
- ^ a b Elliott M. Rudwick, "Oscar De Priest and the Jim Crow Restaurant in the U. S. House of Representatives", The Journal of Negro Education Vol. 35, No. 1 (Winter, 1966), pp. 77–82, via JSTOR, accessed 21 March 2016
- S2CID 149611666.
- ^ "'A Tempest In a Teapot' The Racial Politics of First Lady Lou Hoover's Invitation of Jessie De Priest to a White House Tea". The White House Historical Association. Archived from the original on September 3, 2014. Retrieved August 30, 2014.
- Chicago, Illinois: Cook County (IL) Clerk. Archived from the originalon September 25, 2009. Retrieved May 5, 2009.
- Chicago, Illinois: Cook County (IL) Clerk. Archived from the originalon September 25, 2009. Retrieved May 5, 2009.
- ^ "Social Security Death Index [database on-line]". United States: The Generations Network. Retrieved May 5, 2009.
- Chicago, Illinois: Cook County (IL) Clerk. Archived from the originalon September 25, 2009. Retrieved May 5, 2009.
- ^ "The DePriest Family Legacy", Video Interview, White House Historical Association
- ^ Illinois: Oscar Stanton De Priest House. National Park Service. Retrieved January 29, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Downloadable Vote Totals". Illinois State Board of Elections. Retrieved October 11, 2022.[permanent dead link]
Bibliography
- Day, S. Davis. "Herbert Hoover and Racial Politics: The De Priest Incident". Journal of Negro History 65 (Winter 1980): 6–17.
- Gosnell, Harold F. Negro politicians; the rise of Negro politics in Chicago (1935) online
- Hendricks, Wanda A. "'Vote for the Advantage of Ourselves and Our Race': The Election of the First Black Alderman in Chicago." Illinois Historical Journal 87.3 (1994): 171–184. online
- Mann, Kenneth Eugene. "Oscar Stanton DePriest: Persuasive Agent for the Black Masses." Negro History Bulletin 35.6 (1972): 134–137. online
- Nordhaus-Bike, Anne. "Oscar DePriest lived Pisces's call to service, unity." Gazette, March 7, 2008.
- Olasky, Martin. "History turned right side up". World magazine. 13 February 2010. p. 22.
- 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.
External links
- United States Congress. "Oscar Stanton De Priest (id: D000263)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
- Media related to Oscar De Priest at Wikimedia Commons
- Search for National Historic Landmark: Oscar De Priest House, National Park Service
- Shelley Stokes-Hammond, Biographical sketch: "Pathbreakers: Oscar Stanton DePriest and Jessie L. Williams DePriest", The White House Historical Association
- "The DePriest Family Legacy", Video Interview/YouTube, White House Historical Association
- Part of his life is retold in the 1949 radio drama "Maiden Speech", a presentation from Destination Freedom, written by Richard Durham