Arthur W. Mitchell
Arthur Mitchell tow (* December 22, 1883 in La Fayette, Chambers County, Alabama; † May 9, 1968 in Petersburg, Virginia ) was an American politician of the Democratic Party, who represented the state of Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the first African American member of the U.S. House of Representatives was for the Democratic Party.
Life
After attending public schools studied Mitchell, son of a farmer, at the Tuskegee Institute and then worked for several years a teacher at schools in rural areas of Alabama. Later, he was founding president of the Armstrong Agricultural School in West Butler before he studied law at Columbia University and Harvard University. According to his lawyer, he took admission in 1927 to work as a lawyer in Washington, DC on, before in 1929 he opened a law firm in Chicago. In addition, he was involved in real estate transactions. Between 1926 and 1934 he also served as President of the predominantly African-American academic society Phi Beta Sigma.
His political career began during the New Deal in the 1930s, when he was first elected in 1934 as the candidate of the Democrats in the U.S. Congress elections to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In this he represented as a successor to the Afro-American Republican, Oscar Stanton De Priest of January 3, 1935 to January 3, 1943 the first Congressional District of Illinois. He was thus the first African American Congressman of the Democrats. During this time he was both 1936 and 1940 Democratic National Convention delegate the.
During his membership in the Congress, he presented draft legislation against lynching. After he was forced later on a train because of his skin color to change from the entrance to the State of Arkansas in a train compartment that was not white passengers reserved, he led a lawsuit against the Illinois Central Railroad and the Chicago, rock Iceland and Pacific Railroad before the Supreme Court of the United States. This decided in a judgment that the practice of the two railway companies kind of racial segregation under the principle Separate but equal to the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 violates.
After 1942 waived a bid again, he resumed his work as a lawyer again and was committed to further invest in the civil rights movement as well as through public lectures. Later he settled on a farm in Dinwiddie County, which he called the Land of a Thousand Roses, where he was buried after his death.
Background literature
- Dennis S. Nordin: The New Deal 's Black Congressman: A Life of Arthur tow Mitchell, University of Missouri Press, 1997