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DePriest, Oscar Stanton
3 articles on DePriest, Oscar Stanton
De Priest, Oscar
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
Word Count: 950 Includes: Bibliography(b. 9 March 1871; d. 12 May 1951), politician, the first African American U.S. congressman from the North. Oscar De Priest was born in Florence, Alabama, in 1871. His family migrated to Salina, Kansas, in 1878 to escape racial tensions, but only one other black family lived in Salina when the De Priests arrived. Oscar, his five sisters, and one brother faced constant discrimination. He left at seventeen and settled in Chicago in 1889. He found work as a painter, passing as white and, when discovered and fired, moved from one job to the next. Eventually, he started his own decorating and contracting business, and later enjoyed great success as a real estate broker. His only child with his wife Jessie Williams, Oscar De Priest Jr., worked with him and took over the business when the elder De ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 685 Includes: Bibliography1871–1951
First African American elected to the Congress of the United States since Reconstruction, and first-ever African American congressman from the North. Oscar Stanton DePriest was the son of former slaves. His father was a part-time farmer and hauler, and his mother worked as a laundry worker. They fled Southern poverty and racism in 1878, settling in Kansas as part of the Exodusters migration. DePriest left home when he was seventeen. He lived first in Ohio and then in Chicago, Illinois, where he worked as a painter and decorator. By 1905 he owned his own painting and decorating business. A decade later he opened a lucrative real estate practice that enabled him to capitalize on the Great Migration that brought tens of thousands of blacks to Chicago's South Side.DePriest became active in politics, ...
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Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 1353 Includes: Further Reading | Obituaries:(9 Mar. 1871–12 May 1951), politician, was born in Florence, Alabama, the son of Martha Karsner, a part-time laundress, and Neander R. De Priest, a teamster and farmer. His father, a former slave, joined the Republican Party. After a neighbor's lynching, the family moved to Salina, Kansas, in 1878. Young Oscar had sandy hair, blue eyes, and a light complexion and often fought over racial slurs made in his presence. After two years at Salina Normal School, he left home at seventeen, settling in Chicago. He apprenticed as a house painter and by 1905 had a successful contracting and real estate business. In 1898 he married Jessie L. Williams; they had one child.De Priest was elected Cook County commissioner in 1904 and 1906because he delivered a bloc of African American voters from the city's Second ...
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