Oscar Stanton De Priest, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetOscar Stanton De Priest
American politician
Date of Birth: 09-Mar-1871
Place of Birth: Florence, Alabama, United States
Date of Death: 12-May-1951
Profession: politician
Nationality: United States
Zodiac Sign: Pisces 
About Oscar Stanton De Priest
- Oscar Stanton De Priest (March 9, 1871 – May 12, 1951) was an American politician and civil rights advocate from Chicago.
- A member of the Illinois Republican Party he was the first African American to be elected to Congress in the 20th century.
- During his three terms, he was the only African American serving in Congress.
- He served as a U.S.
- Representative from Illinois' 1st congressional district from 1929 to 1935.
- De Priest was also the first African-American U.S.
- Representative from outside the southern states, the first since the Reconstruction Era, and the first since the exit of North Carolina representative George Henry White from Congress in 1901.
- Born in Alabama to freedmen parents, De Priest was raised in Dayton, Ohio.
- He studied business and made a fortune in Chicago as a contractor, and in real estate and the stock market before the Crash.
- A successful local politician, he was elected to the Chicago City Council in 1914, the first African American to hold that office.
- In Congress in the early 1930s, he spoke out against racial discrimination, including at speaking events in the South; tried to integrate the House public restaurant; gained passage of an amendment to desegregate the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the work programs under President Franklin D.
- Roosevelt's New Deal; and introduced anti-lynching legislation to the House (it was not passed because of the Solid South Democratic opposition).
- In 1934, De Priest was defeated by Arthur W.
- Mitchell, the first African American to be elected as a Democrat to Congress.
- De Priest returned to Chicago and his successful business ventures, eventually returning to politics, when he was again elected Chicago alderman in the 1940s.
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