“I want to thank the Democrats of the south for one thing,” De Priest said at the NAACP meeting. “They were so barbaric they drove my parents to the north. If it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t be in congress today. I’ve been Jim Crowed, segregated, persecuted, and I think I know how best the Negro can put a stop to being imposed on: it is through the ballot, through organization, through fighting eternally for his rights.”