"John Mercer Langston"(December 14,1829-November 15,1897)

Was an American abolitionist,attorney,educator,activists,politician.John was the first dean at Howard University and helped create the

department.He was the first president what is now Virginia State University,a historically African American College.Born a free African American in Virginia to a former slave mama who was bi-raced and an English planter daddy,in 1888 John was elected to the U.S. Congress as the first African American representative from Virginia.The first African American Congressman,Joseph Hayne Rainey of South Carolina,had been elected in 1870 during the Reconstruction era.In the Jim Crow era of the later later nineteenth century,John was one of only five African American elected to Congress from the South before the former Confederate states passed constitutions and electoral rules that essentially eliminated the African American vote.After that,no African American would be elected from the South until 1973,after the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965,was passed to enforce constitutional rights.In addition,the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the gerrymandered district lines that Southern Democratic State legislatures had drawn to keep African Americans from voting.John's career was based in Ohio with his brother Charles,he began his lifelong work for African American freedom,education,equal rights and suffrage.In 1855 he was one of the first African Americans in the U.S. elected to public office when elected as a town clerk in Ohio.John was the youngest brother of Charles Henry Langston,a fellow abolitionists they were the great-uncles of renowned poet Langston Hughes.John was born free in 1829 in Louis County,Virginia,the youngest of a daughter and three sons of Lucy Jane Langston,a freedwoman mixed African and Native American,and Ralph Quarles,an English plantation owner,Ralph freed Lucy,a slave and their daughter Maria in 1806,in the course of what was a relationship of more than 25 years.Their sons were born free.His older brothers were Gideon & Charles Henry.Lucy had three other children with another partner before she moved into the big house and deepened her relationship with Ralph.Their three sons were born after her move.Of the half siblings,William Langston was most involved with Quarles' sons.He relocated with them to Chillicothe,Ohio.Before his death Ralph arranged for his quaker friend William Gooch to be made guardian of his children.As requested by Ralph,after parents both died in 1833 when John was 4,William moved with the boys and their half-brother William Langston to Chillicothe,Ohio,in a free state.Ralph had reserved funds for their education.In 1835 the older brothers Gideon & Charles started at the preparatory at Oberlin College,where they were the first African Americans students admitted.Gideon looked so much like his daddy and took his surname at the age of 21,and thereafter was known as Gideon Quarles.The youngest Langston followed them,enrolling in the preparatory program at Oberlin College at age of fourteen.John earned a bachelor's degree in 1849 and a master's degree in theology in 1852 from Oberlin.Denied admission to law school in New York & Ohio because of his race,John studied law (or "read law," as was a practice then) under attorney and Republican U.S. congressman Philemon Bliss and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1854.John married Caroline Matilda Wal,who also graduated from Oberlin.She was from North Carolina,Caroline was the emancipated daughter of an enslaved mama and colonel Stephen Wall,a wealthy white planter.The planter freed his bi-racial daughters Sara & Caroline,and sent them to Ohio to be raised in an affluent Quaker household.An intellectual partner of John,Caroline had five children with him,one of whom died in childhood.Together along with older brothers Gideon & Charles,John became active in the abolitionist movement.He helped runaway slaves to escape to the North along the Ohio part of the Underground Railroad.In 1858 he and Charles partnered in leading the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society,with John,acting as president and traveling to organize local units,and Charles' managing as executive secretary in Cleveland.In 1863 when the government approved founding of the United States Colored Troops,John was appointed to recruit African Americans to fight for the Union Army.He enlisted hundreds of men for duty in the Massachusetts Fifty-fifth regiments,in addition to 800 for Ohio's first African American regiment.After the war,he was appointed inspector general for the Freedmen's Bureau,a federal organization that assisted freed slaves and tried to oversee labor contracts;it also ran a bank and helped establish schools for freedmen and their children.Even before the end of the war,John worked for issues of African Americans suffrage and opportunity.He believed that African American men service had earned their right vote,and that it was fundamental to their creating and equal place in society.In 1864 he chaired the committee whose agenda was ratified by the black National Convention:they called for abolition of slavery,support of racial unity and self help,and equality before the law.To accomplish this program,the convention founded the National Equal Rights League and elected John president.He served until 1868.Like the later NAACP,the League was based in state and local organizations,John traveled widely to build support."By war's end,nine auxiliaries had been established;some twenty months later,John could boast of state league nearly everywhere.In 1868 he moved to Washington,D.C. to establish and serve as dean of Howard University's law school;it was the first law school in the U.S. Appointed acting president of the school in 1872 and vice president of the school,John,worked to establish strong academic standards.He also hoped to create the of open environment he had known at Oberlin College.John was passed over for the permanent position of president of Howard University School of Law by a committee that refused to disclose the reason.During 1870 John assisted Republican Senator Charles Summer from Massachusetts with drafting the Civil Rights bill that would later become the Civil Rights Act of 1875.The 43rd Congress of the United States passed the bill in February 1875 and was signed into law by President Ulysses S.Grant on March 1,1875.President Grant appointed John a member of the Board of Health of the District of Columbia.In 1877 he appointed John a U.S. Minister to Haiti;he also served as charge d'affaries to the Dominican Republic.In 1885 John returned to the U.S. and Virginia,where he was named the first president of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute a historically black college (HBCU) at Petersburg.There he also began to build a political base.In 1888,John was urged to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives by fellow Republicans,both African Americans & white.Leaders of the biracial Readjuster Party,which had held political power in Virginia from 1879-1883,did not support his candidacy.John ran as a Republican and lost to his Democratic opponent.He contested the results of the election because of voter intimidation and fraud.After 18 months,the Congressional committee declared John the winner,and he took his seat in the U.S.Congress.John served for the remaining six months of the term,but lost his bid for reelection as Democrats regained control of Virginia.John was the first African American elected to Congress from Virginia,and he was the last for another century.In period of increasing disfranchisement of African Americans in the South,John was one of five African Americans in Congress during the Jim Crow era of the last decade of the nineteenth century.Two were elected from South Carolina and two from North Carolina.After them,no African Americans would be elected from the South until 1972,after passage of federal civil rights civil rights legislation enforcing constitutional rights for all citizens.In 1890 John was named as a member of the board of trustees of St.Paul Normal and Industrial School,a historically black college,when it was incorporated by the Virginia General Assembly.