John Mercer Langston
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John Mercer Langston (December 14, 1829 – November 15, 1897) was an American abolitionist and U.S. Congressman from Virginia. He was one of the first blacks in the United States to be elected to public office when in 1855 he was elected as a town clerk in Ohio.
Langston was born in Louisa County, Virginia, the son of Ralph Quarles, a white plantation owner, and Lucy Langston, a slave of mixed African and Native American background. After his parents died when Langston was five, he and his brothers moved to Oberlin, Ohio, to live with family friends. He enrolled in Oberlin College at the age of fourteen and earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the institution. Denied admission into law school, Langston then studied law under attorney Philemon Bliss and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1854.
He became actively involved in the Abolitionism movement, organizing antislavery societies locally and at the state level. He helped runaway slaves to escape to the North along the Ohio part of the Underground Railroad. He was a founding member and president of the National Equal Rights League, which fought for black voting rights.
During the Civil War, Langston recruited African Americans to fight for the Union Army, enlisting hundreds of men for duty in the United States Colored Troops. After the war, he was appointed inspector general for the Freedmen's Bureau, a Federal organization that assisted freed slaves.
Langston moved to Washington, D.C., in 1868 to establish and serve as dean of Howard University's law school—the first black law school in the country. He was appointed acting president of the school in 1872. He was appointed by President Grant a member of the board of health of the District of Columbia, and was elected its secretary in 1875. In 1877 Langston left to become U.S. Minister to Haiti. He returned to Virginia in 1885 and was named the first president of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (now Virginia State University).
In 1888 he ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as an Republican. He lost to his Democratic opponent, but contested the results of the election. After an 18-month fight, he was declared the winner and given the seat in Congress. He served for the remaining six months of the term, and then lost his bid for reelection. Langston was the first black person elected to Congress from Virginia, and he was the only one for another century.
Oklahoma's Langston University is named in his honor, as is the John Mercer Langston Bar Association in Columbus, Ohio and Langston Middle School in Oberlin, Ohio.
Langston was the great-uncle of poet Langston Hughes.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Congressional Biography
- This article incorporates text from the public domain Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography.
| Preceded by Edward Carrington Venable |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 4th congressional district September 23, 1890 - March 3, 1891 |
Succeeded by James F. Epes |
