Oscar Stanton DePriest: Republican Politics, Non-Partisanship, and the Struggle for Civil Rights

• In Event: Civil Rights, Resistance, and a Chicago Power Broker: The Legacies of Oscar DePriest

Abstract

Dr. Alison Parker's paper revises our understanding of DePriest as more than a notable “first” in so many realms and as more than a product of Chicago’s notoriously corrupt urban party machine. The Illinois Republican served from 1929 to 1935 and practiced a non-partisanship that put African Americans’ material and social progress above party. Although he has been dismissed by some as “a supreme opportunist” not bound “by loyalty to any abstract cause,” DePriest consistently used the political strategy and philosophy of non-partisanship to advance the civil rights of African Americans. DePriest challenged conventional partisan divisions in US politics to advance racial justice but paid a price for his perceived lack of partisan loyalty. His political career and agenda represent an important tradition of independent Black activism.

Author

• Alison Marie Parker, University of Delaware