Oscar Stanton De Priest

Oscar Stanton De Priest was an American Republican politician and civil rights advocate from Chicago who served as a U.S. Representative from Illinois 1st congressional district from 1929 to 1935. Elected during a year when Republican Herbert Hoover gained crossover support in the presidential campaign from five southern states, De Priest was the first African American to be elected to Congress from outside the southern states and the first in the 20th century. During his three terms, he was the only African American serving in Congress.

De Priest was born in 1871 in Florence, Alabama, to freedmen, former slaves of mixed race. He had a brother named Robert. His mother, Martha Karsner, worked parttime as a laundress, and his father Neander was a teamster, associated with the Exodus movement. After the Civil War, thousands of blacks left continued oppression by whites in the South by moving to other states that offered greater freedom, such as Kansas. Others moved later in the century.

Source: Wikipedia