This photo was taken at a Chicago Democratic dinner party in 1954, of Colonel Jake Arvey, States Attorney John Gutknecht, and Congressman William L. Dawson. William Levi Dawson (1886-1970) was an African American politician and lawyer in Chicago. Born in Albany, he graduated from Albany Normal School (which later became Albany State University) in 1905, magna cum laude from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee in 1909, and then moved to Illinois in 1912 to study at Northwestern University Law School in Evanston. After his service in WWI, he was admitted to the bar in 1920 and commenced private law practice in Chicago. He started his political career as a member of the Republican Party in 1930; by 1933 Dawson had joined the Democratic Party and served in local Chicago politics until he was elected as a Democratic Representative from Illinois, serving from January 3, 1943 until his death in Chicago on November 9, 1970.