Oscar DePriest

Politician

• Born: March 9, 1871
• Birthplace: Florence, Alabama
• Died: May 12, 1951
• Place of death: Chicago, Illinois

DePriest, a Chicago businessman and politician, was the first African American to win election to Congress after Reconstruction. He also was the first African American congressman from a northern state.

Early Life

Oscar Stanton DePriest was born in Florence, Alabama, in 1871. His parents, both former slaves, moved the family to Salina, Kansas, in 1878, hoping to escape racism and poverty. In Kansas, DePriest attended grade school and spent two years at the Salina Normal School, where he studied business and bookkeeping. DePriest left home at seventeen, first moving to Ohio, then settling in Chicago, Illinois, in 1889. His education and entrepreneurial spirit helped him open a painting and decorating business there in 1905. Ten years later, he began a successful career in real estate, drawing clients from among the many African Americans who were moving north during the Great Migration.

The first political position DePriest held was Cook County commissioner, from 1904 to 1908. In 1915, he became the first black alderman elected in Chicago. When he was accused of ties to organized crime in 1917, he left public office and went back to his real estate business; a year later, his name was cleared with the help of the famous attorney Clarence Darrow. DePriest continued to influence local politics throughout the 1920’s, forging an affiliation with Chicago’s Republican mayor, William “Big Bill” Hale Thompson. This affiliation garnered DePriest the chance to replace a deceased Illinois Third Congressional District Republican incumbent during the national elections of 1928. In 1929, DePriest joined the U.S. Congress, becoming its first African American member since Reconstruction and the first from a northern state.

Life’s Work

DePriest’s congressional successes included an antidiscrimination amendment to the legislation creating the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal program, in March of 1933. The text reads as follows: “That in employing citizens for the purposes of this Act no discrimination shall be made on account of race, color, or creed.”

On a smaller, often more personal, scale, DePriest’s antidiscrimination efforts involved controversies surrounding segregated Washington, D.C., facilities and social events. One highly publicized incident occurred at the beginning of his term. Traditionally, the First Lady held a tea for the wives of congressmen; in 1929, Lou Henry Hoover ignored the outcry from the South and invited DePriest’s wife, Jessie. While the event reportedly went smoothly, southern newspapers printed articles scolding Hoover, and legislatures in Florida and Texas formally censured her. Another incident involved the expulsion of DePriest’s secretary and his secretary’s son from the “whites only” public restaurant in the House wing of the Capitol. DePriest resolved to investigate the incident and the policy of segregation in the House restaurant. An investigative panel was formed, but it made no substantial revisions to restaurant policies—a result of having a panel split along party lines. Other legislative measures DePriest proposed and supported included a reduction in the number of seats allotted to states that did not allow African Americans to vote; a provision for monthly pensions for former slaves older than seventy-five; a resolution to authorize the change of venue for a trial if the original venue could compromise the fair treatment of defendants because of their race, color, or creed; and a measure that would have made local authorities liable for fines or imprisonment if prisoners under their watch were lynched.

While clearly a champion for African American interests, DePriest, as a member of the House Committee on Indian Affairs, seems to have championed Native American rights as well. On May 10, 1934, DePriest submitted a report recommending passage of a bill (H.R. 6009) allowing “enrolled” Indians to claim a refund of taxes they paid on income received from their lands.

DePriest’s final political position was as a Chicago city councilman/alderman, an office he held from 1943 to 1947. In 1951, DePriest died as a result of injuries he sustained in a bus accident.

Significance

A series of firsts exemplifies DePriest’s importance in American political history: He was the first African American alderman in the city of Chicago, the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress in the twentieth century, and the first African American congressman from a northern state. While in Congress, DePriest worked to bring attention to inequalities both in that institution and in American society. Even though his efforts were not always successful, the significance of those efforts cannot be denied.

Bibliography

Day, David S. “Herbert Hoover and Racial Politics: The DePriest Incident.” The Journal of Negro History 65, no. 1 (Winter, 1980): 6-17. Attempts to clear up some inconsistencies in the story of the First Lady’s controversial tea party.

Rudwick, Elliott M. “Oscar DePriest and the Jim Crow Restaurant in the U.S. House of Representatives.” Journal of Negro Education 35 (Winter, 1966): 77-82. Discusses DePriest’s attempt to desegregate the House restaurant in terms of the incident’s broader historical implications for segregated facilities in the nation’s capital.

U.S. Congress. House. Office of History and Preservation. Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2008. Supplies written and graphical data on DePriest, as well as similar data on 137 years’ worth of African American members of Congress.