"William Levi Dawson"(April 26,1886-November 9, 1970)

Was an African-American  politician and lawyer who represented Chicago,Illinois for than 27 years in the U.S. of  House of Representatives.He was born in Albany Georgia.He attended the local public school and graduated from Albany Normal School in 1905,which prepared teachers for lower schools.He went on to graduated magna cum laude in 1909 from Fisk University,a historically African-American college in Nashville Tennessee.There he also joined Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.He moved to Illinois in 1912 to study at Northwestern Western University in Evanston.After the entry of the U.S. into World War I,William served overseas as a first lieutenant with the Three Hundred and Sixty-fifth Infantry of the United States Army from 1917 until 1919.After returning home,he was admitted to the bar in 1920 and started a private practice in Chicago.He began his political career as a member of the Republican Party in 1930 as a state central committeeman for the First Congressional District of Illinois.He held the position until 1932.He was elected as an alderman for the second ward of Chicago from 1933 until 1939 and as a Democratic Party committeeman after 1939.William was elected as a Democratic Representative from Illinois to the Seventy-eight and to the thirteen succeeding Congresses,serving from January 3,1943 until his death.In addition to influencing national policy,he acted as a mentor for rising young African-American politicians in Chicago,such as a Archibald Carey,Jr., helping with their elections and federal appointments.During his tenure in the House,William was a vocal opponent of the poll tax,which in practice was discriminatory against poorer voters.Since the end of nineteenth century,poll taxes were among a variety of measures passed by southern states to disfranchise most African-Americans voters and many poor whites as well.William is credited with defeating the Winstead Amendment.Proposed by Representative William Winstead of Mississippi after the Truman administration integrated the United States armed forces following World War II,it would have allowed military members opt to out of racially integrated units.In 1952, he was the featured speaker at the first annual conference of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (a civil rights organization),held in the all African-American town of Mound Bayou,Mississippi.He was invited by Dr.Theodore Howard Roosevelt Mason Howard,who headed the RCNL.He was the first African-American congressman to speak in the state since Reconstruction ended in 1877.William, a member of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had the long-term goal increasing national black support for the party;since the Civil War,most African-Americans had been allied with the Republican Party.Theodore became William's opponent in the 1958 election,William kept his seat.William was the first African-American to serve as the chairman of a regular congressional committee,leading the committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments in the Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses.He served on the Committee on Government Operations in the Eighty-Fourth through Ninety-First Congresses.He was also leader of the African-American "submachine"within the Cook County Democratic Organization.In the predominantly African-American wards,William was able to act as his own political boss,handing out patronage and punishing rivals just as leaders of the larger machines,such as Richard Joseph Daley,did William had to continually support the regular machine in order to retain its own clout.President John Kennedy offered William the position of the United States Postmaster General as a reward for his work on Kennedy's 1960 election campaign.He declined as he believed that he could accomplish more in the House.William died in Chicago.He was cremated ,and his ashes were placed in the columbarium in the Griffin Funeral Home in Chicago.