depriest leads congress in 1935. he is defeated for reelection by another african-american from chicago. arthur mitchell. he is the first african-american elected as a democrat to congress. what you begin to see in that decade of the 1930's into the 1940's and you see it very clearly in this chicago district is that there is a shift in african-american allegiance away from the american republican party to the democratic party during the new deal. has to do with the fact that african-americans are recruited by democratic city leaders. there is the promise of greater political participation. the promise that pulled african-americans out of the south during the great migration to begin with. and also that he has a slightly greater voice in the new deal coalition that roosevelt's together. you begin to be drawn toward the democratic party. mitchell is the embodiment of that. he chooses not to be a surrogate representative. he downplays the fact that he downplays the fact that he's a african-american in congress. he does

it says depriest for congress. one of the things i love most about it is they are very rare. there were probably not many around initially. very few survive. i think i have only seen one or two others in existence. if you think about the tiny lapel,worn on someone's looking like any other button, this actually represents a revolution, the attempt to elect an african american to congress for the first time in decades. the presence of this little piece of metal would have been a real statement on the part of whoever was wearing it. i love that it has survived and whoeverk to the place owned it wanted him to end up, which was the u.s. congress. , he found a lot that he was interested in, a lot that came to him that perhaps he did not ask for in the way he was received, the issues he handled, all kinds of stuff like that. he does end up being the circuit representative for african americans in general. surrogate representative for african americans in general. >> absolutely. he had come up through the chicago political machine and while he had advocated for his constituency in ch