Illinois Congressman Arthur W. Mitchell On April 28, 1941, Illinois Congressman Arthur Mitchell argued to the Supreme Court that African Americans were entitled to railroad accommodations equal to white passengers. Born to former slaves in Alabama in 1883, Mitchell attended the Tuskegee Institute and worked his way through school as a farmer and in the office of Booker T. Washington. He attended law school at Columbia University and Harvard before moving to Chicago, where he worked as a lawyer and got into politics. He was elected to Congress in 1934 as the nation’s first African American Democratic congressman. Throughout his four terms, he was the only African American in Congress.