Arthur Wergs Mitchell (1883-1968) was the first black Democrat to be elected to Congress. Mitchell would serve four terms in Congress, from 1935-1943. Born to former slaves in Alabama in 1883, Mitchell was a student in public schools until, at 14, he left home and enrolled in Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. He began his training there in 1897 and worked on a farm and as an office boy to Booker T. Washington to pay for his education at Tuskegee. He became a teacher, then he founded the Armstrong Agricultural School in West Butler, Alabama, and served as the school’s president for a decade
Mitchell then attended both Columbia and Harvard Universities. In 1927, he became a member of the bar in Washington, DC. He practiced law there until he moved to Chicago in 1929. After the move, he continued practicing law but also made money in real estate.
Up until this time in American life, blacks had been aligned with the Republican Party. It had been a natural choice, because Republicans were advocates of slaves and worked diligently for their freedom and to secure their rights. Slave-turned-statesman Frederick Douglass once declared, “I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.”
Sadly, in Douglass’ day, racism had been prevalent in the Democrat Party, and it would continue. Even so, by the 1930s, racism among Democrats was just one of many factors influencing people’s political perspectives.
The economic devastation of the Great Depression, the impression that President Hoover had done little or nothing to stop or slow the nation’s economic downturn, and the intervention of government to help those in need put pressures on the political allegiances of the past and became strong factors in changing them.
After moving to Chicago, Arthur Mitchell became involved politically as a Republican, but he soon decided that his views actually were closer to those of the Democrats, and in 1932 he switched parties. In 1934 Mitchell chose to run for a congressional seat located on the South Side of Chicago with a heavy African-American population. He ran against a gentleman named Harry Baker for the nomination but lost narrowly lost. Baker died, however, before the general election was held, and party officials charged with the decision of selecting a replacement for him chose Mitchell. The contest, therefore, became one between two black politicians—Oscar De Priest, a Republican, and Mitchell, a Democrat. The now loyal Democrat “turned the contest against the venerable Republican Representative into a referendum on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s public–relief policies.” Mitchell won, but not by much. Even so, his election was significant in that he was the first black Democrat elected to Congress. In each of his three reelection bids, Mitchell narrowly bested his opponent and was, throughout his congressional career, the only African American in the US House and Senate. Mitchell choose not to run for a fifth term and moved to Virginia where he became a farmer. He died at his Virginia home in 1968.
In your mind, rewind now to 33 years earlier when Arthur Mitchell entered Congress in 1935. His stated intentions speak volumes about a country that was then beginning to change its perspective on a wide variety of issues. Remember, Mitchell was the first black Democrat elected to the US Congress. Mitchell declared, “What I am interested in is to help this grand President of ours feed the hungry and clothe the naked and provide work for the idle of every race and creed.”
It is critical that we understand the significance of this statement.*
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Copyright © 2016 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All Rights Reserved.
* https://wordfoundations.com/governments-god-ordained-role/