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John Mercer Langston (December 14, 1829 – November 15, 1897) was an abolitionist, attorney, educator, activist, diplomat, and politician in the United States. An African American, he became the first dean of the law school at Howard University and helped create the department. He was the first president of what is now Virginia State University, a historically black college.
Born a free black in Virginia to a freedwoman of mixed race and a white planter father, in 1888 Langston was elected to the U.S. Congress as the first representative of color from Virginia. Joseph Hayne Rainey, the black Republican congressman from South Carolina, had been elected in 1870 during the Reconstruction era.
In the Jim Crow era of the later nineteenth century, Langston was one of only five African Americans elected to Congress from the South before the former Confederate states passed constitutions and electoral rules from 1890 to 1908 that essentially disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites, excluding the blacks from politics. After that, no African Americans would be elected from the South until 1973, after the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed to enforce their constitutional rights. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the gerrymandered district lines that southern white Democratic State legislatures had drawn to dilute their power and prevent blacks from having enough of a presence in any district to be able to elect a representative of their choice. At the time, most blacks supported Republican Party candidates, both white and black.
Langston's early career was based in Ohio where, with his older brother Charles Henry Langston, 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 United States elected to public office when elected as a town clerk in Ohio.[1][2][3] John was a great-uncle of the renowned poet Langston Hughes.
Born a free black in Virginia to a freedwoman of mixed race and a white planter father, in 1888 Langston was elected to the U.S. Congress as the first representative of color from Virginia. Joseph Hayne Rainey, the black Republican congressman from South Carolina, had been elected in 1870 during the Reconstruction era.
In the Jim Crow era of the later nineteenth century, Langston was one of only five African Americans elected to Congress from the South before the former Confederate states passed constitutions and electoral rules from 1890 to 1908 that essentially disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites, excluding the blacks from politics. After that, no African Americans would be elected from the South until 1973, after the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed to enforce their constitutional rights. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the gerrymandered district lines that southern white Democratic State legislatures had drawn to dilute their power and prevent blacks from having enough of a presence in any district to be able to elect a representative of their choice. At the time, most blacks supported Republican Party candidates, both white and black.
Langston's early career was based in Ohio where, with his older brother Charles Henry Langston, 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 United States elected to public office when elected as a town clerk in Ohio.[1][2][3] John was a great-uncle of the renowned poet Langston Hughes.
John Mercer Langston - Wikipedia
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Langston University John Mercer Langston Burial Site
A long lost burial site was discovered. While visiting a funeral burial at Woodlawn Cemetary in Washington DC., a Langston University Alum wondered upon the ...
Thank you my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that December 14 is the anniversary of the birth of African American "abolitionist, attorney, educator, activist, diplomat, and politician in the United States" John Mercer Langston who "became the first dean of the law school at Howard University and helped create the department."
Rest in peace John Mercer Langston
Images
1. John Mercer Langston
2. 1854 Admission to the Ohio Bar for John Mercer Langston
3. Educating the Freedmen
4. First Graduating class of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute
Background from
"John Mercer Langston (1829–1897)
Contributed by Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography
John Mercer Langston served as Virginia's first African American member of Congress (1890–1891) and as the first president of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University). The son of a white Louisa County planter and the woman he freed, Langston grew up in Ohio, where, as an attorney and local office holder, he helped recruit African American troopsduring the American Civil War (1861–1865). After the war, his involvement with the Freedmen's Bureau as inspector of schools brought him back to Virginia. In 1870 Langston became dean of Howard University's law school and served as acting president of the university from 1873 until 1875. In 1885, the Virginia State Board of Education named Langston president of the new Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. The new school grew under his leadership, but the Democrat-packed board of visitors did not renew his contract two years later. In 1888 he sought the Republican nomination for Congress, but party leader William Mahone engineered his defeat. Langston ran an independent campaign in which a Democrat was named the winner. Langston disputed the election results, however, and eventually Congress seated him for the final months of his term. He lost reelection and returned to Washington, D.C., where he published an autobiography. He died in Washington in 1897. MORE...
Early Years
Langston was born free in Louisa County on December 14, 1829. He was the youngest son of a white planter, Ralph Quarles, and his mistress, Lucy Jane Langston, whom he purchased and freed in 1806. She was of mixed African and American Indian ancestry. Langston later emphasized that the views of his father "with regard to slavery and the management of slaves upon a plantation by overseers, were peculiar and unusual." The former enslaved woman and her former owner had a genuine love for each other but could not legally marry in Virginia. They both died early in 1834 and Langston later wrote that they were buried side by side.
Langston was taken to live with his guardian in Ohio, where Langston grew up and graduated from Oberlin College in 1849. He earned his MA in 1852 and graduated from the college's seminary in 1853. He also studied law and in 1854 was admitted to the bar. In 1855, Langston won election as clerk of the township of Brownhelm, making him one of the first African Americans to hold elective office in Ohio. He quickly became a major figure in the abolitionist movement and in the state's nascent Republican Party. In Oberlin, on October 25, 1854, Langston married Caroline Matilda Wall. They had three sons and two daughters, one of whom died in childhood.
During the Civil War, Langston worked tirelessly to recruit men for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts regiments as well as for the 5th Ohio Regiment of the United States Colored Troops. He registered for the draft in June 1863 and desired to serve as a colonel in the United States Army, but the war ended before he could obtain a commission.
In Higher Education
Langston began traveling throughout the South, where he spoke before large black and white audiences about the importance of African American suffrage and education. In May 1867 he joined the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands as an agent observing schools in Virginia, and on June 17, 1867, he became the bureau's general inspector of schools. The following year, he was appointed a law professor at Howard University, in Washington, D.C., and he headed the department when it opened in January 1869. Named dean of the law school in 1870, Langston served as vice president and acting president of the university from December 1873 to July 1875. Howard awarded an honorary LLD to Langston in 1874. He continued to be active in the Republican Party, and in 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him a member of the Board of Health for the District of Columbia. In 1877 President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him minister resident and consul general to Haiti, a post in which he served until resigning in 1885. In 1883 Langston published a collection of his speeches entitled Freedom and Citizenship.
Virginia's State Board of Education appointed Langston president of the nascent Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University), on November 19, 1885. He accepted in December and took office in January 1886 at the campus near Petersburg. One of the principal purposes of the institute, the first state-supported college of its kind in the South, was to prepare African American teachers for the state's public school system. It was pioneering in the South, too, by being coeducational and by employing both male and female instructors.
During Langston's first year, the institute had 150 students, but its one large building had not been completed, and the financial management of the construction project had become mired in scandal. Nevertheless, he was able to continue a state-mandated teachers' institute on the campus in the summer of 1886, and he persuaded the General Assembly to increase appropriations to finish the main building. Langston expanded the regular teacher education program to include such subjects as astronomy, civics, English literature, and rhetoric, and he established six new professorships.
Enrollment increased to almost 200 in his second year, and the summer institute in 1887 attracted 131 teachers. By then, however, unsympathetic Democrats in the assembly had replaced the Republican-appointed members of the board of visitors and the new board clashed with Langston over his vision for the school's future. The students publicly supported Langston, but when the board of visitors met on December 6, 1887, less than a month before his contract expired, the board elected James H. Johnstonto succeed Langston as president.
A Disputed Election
On January 2, 1888, Langston attended a Republican Party conference in Farmville, where African Americans urged him to run for the House of Representatives from the Fourth District. The district had a black-majority population and encompassed the city of Petersburg and the counties of Amelia, Brunswick, Dinwiddie, Greensville, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Nottoway, Powhatan, Prince Edward, Prince George, and Sussex. Langston sought the Republican Party nomination, but the party's white leader, the former Confederate general William Mahone, opposed him and supported a white Republican, Richard W. Arnold. Even though Mahone had been the principal organizer of a biracial coalition of Republicans and Readjusters that had enacted the law that created the normal institute, he balked at allowing African Americans to rise high in the party's ranks.
As a consequence of Mahone's influence within the party, Arnold won the nomination at the September convention, but Langston campaigned for the congressional seat vigorously as an independent Republican. The district's African Americans supported him rather than Arnold against the wishes of the party's white leaders, and when the ballots were counted, Arnold had received a mere 3,207 votes and Langston 12,657. But the Democratic Party nominee, Edward C. Venable, was declared the victor with 13,298 votes.
Langston challenged the result after the Fifty-First Congress assembled in 1889 and presented a massive amount of evidence of dishonesty in the conduct of the election and in the tabulation of the votes. Democrats replied with charges of Republican misconduct, too, but on September 23, 1890, the House of Representatives voted to unseat Venable and awarded the seat to Langston. During the preliminaries to the vote, Virginia Congressman Charles T. O'Ferrall, hoping to prevent action by the absence of a quorum, persuaded the other Democrats to refuse to answer when the clerk called the roll. The Speaker of the House of Representatives finally ordered the clerk to record the silent Democrats as present and declared Langston elected.
In Congress
The first African American to win a seat in Congress from Virginia, Langston actually served only from September 23, 1890, to March 3, 1891, and Congress was not in session in October and November during that time. During the session he sat on the Committee on Education. He proposed a national literacy test to vote in federal elections as an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which he believed could increase literacy for both black and whites, and introduced a bill to establish a national industrial university for African Americans. Both proposals failed.
Langston delivered two speeches in the House of Representatives, one on the merchant marine, and the more important one on January 16, 1891, in support of the so-called Force Bill that the Senate had refused to consider. It would have provided for supervision of federal elections to guarantee African Americans fair treatment. Langston condemned Democrats for opposing full civil rights for all citizens, including southern white men who were also sometimes victims of voter frauds. "The question," Langston stated, "is, shall every freeman, shall every American citizen, shall every American elector in the North and in the South, everywhere in the country, be permitted to wield a free ballot in the interests of our common country and our free institutions?"
Despite continued opposition from Mahone, Langston ran for reelection in the autumn of 1890 against Democrat James F. Epes in another campaign that probably featured fraud and intimidation of voters. The official tally was 9,991 for Langston and 13,325 for Epes, but Langston chose not to challenge the outcome. The Republican Party again nominated Langston for Congress in 1892, but he declined to run.
Later Years
Langston's 1888 campaign highlighted personal and political differences between him and Frederick Douglass, one of his most outspoken critics. The radically different upbringings of the two prominent African American leaders had not, at first, brought them into conflict. The men possibly saw each other as rivals by the mid-1870s, and the division may have been intensified by callous remarks that Douglass made in 1884 concerning one of Langston's sons, Frank Langston, who had been tried for and ultimately acquitted of murder.
The two men diverged politically on the subject of black emigration from the South. On the one hand, Langston viewed emigration by freedpeople to the North or West as a positive demonstration of exercising their new freedom, both physically and psychologically, in search of expanded opportunities. Douglass, on the other hand, believed that the best way for freedpeople to achieve prosperity was to remain in the South and farm the lands they knew.
Whatever the reasons, by 1888 they viewed each other as rivals, and in 1888 Mahone asked Douglass to write a letter opposing Langston's candidacy. Douglass agreed, and his public letter provoked outrage from the local black community in Virginia and increased Langston's popular appeal in the Fourth District. Furthermore, Douglass's public opposition to Langston's candidacy drew criticism from black newspapers like the Richmond Planet as well as the New York Age.
Early in the 1890s, Langston moved back to Washington, D.C., where he published his autobiography, From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol, in 1894. His grandnephew, the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, later memorialized his tenacity in the face of discrimination in describing Langston's response when local whites erected a barrier to prevent him from passing through their section of the capital city. Langston, "got out, took his axe and chopped it down while the coachman held his gloves. From then on, without hindrance, he rode behind his snow-white horses through the street[s] of Washington."
Langston continued to practice law and speak out on issues of race and political equality until he died at his Washington home on November 15, 1897. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, in Washington, D.C.
Major Works
• Freedom and Citizenship (1883)
• From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol (1894)
Time Line
• December 14, 1829 - John Mercer Langston is born free in Louisa County. He is the son a white planter and his free black mistress.
• 1834 - Ralph Quarles, a white planter, and Lucy Jane Langston, his free black mistress, both die. They were the parents of John Mercer Langston.
• 1849 - John Mercer Langston graduates with a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College.
• 1852 - John Mercer Langston graduates with a master's degree from Oberlin College.
• 1854 - John Mercer Langston is admitted to the Ohio bar.
• October 25, 1854 - John Mercer Langston and Caroline Matilda Wall marry, in Oberlin, Ohio. They will have three sons and two daughters.
• 1855 - John Mercer Langston wins election as clerk of the township of Brownhelm, Ohio, making him one of the first African Americans to hold elective office in Ohio.
• June 1863 - John Mercer Langston registers for the draft and seeks an officer's commission, but the Civil War ends before he receives one.
• May 1867 - John Mercer Langston joins the Freedmen's Bureau as an agent observing schools in Virginia.
• June 17, 1867 - John Mercer Langston becomes the Freedmen's Bureau's general inspector of schools.
• 1868 - Howard University, in Washington, D.C., appoints John Mercer Langston a law professor.
• January 1869 - When it opens, John Mercer Langston is head of the law department at Howard University, in Washington, D.C.
• 1870 - Howard University, in Washington, D.C., appoints John Mercer Langston dean of its law school.
• 1871 - President Ulysses S. Grant appoints John Mercer Langston a member of the Board of Health for the District of Columbia.
• December 1873–July 1875 - John Mercer Langston serves as vice president and acting president of Howard University, in Washington, D.C.
• 1874 - Howard University, in Washington, D.C., awards John Mercer Langston an honorary LLD.
• 1877–1885 - In the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes, John Mercer Langston serves as minister resident and consul general to Haiti.
• 1883 - John Mercer Langston publishes a collection of his speeches entitled Freedom and Citizenship.
• November 19, 1885 - Virginia's State Board of Education appoints John Mercer Langston president of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University).
• December 6, 1887 - The board of visitors for Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute elects James H. Johnston to succeed John Mercer Langston as president.
• 1888 - At the behest of William Mahone, Frederick Douglass writes a letter opposing the congressional candidacy of John Mercer Langston.
• January 2, 1888 - John Mercer Langston attends a Republican Party conference in Farmville, where he is urged to run for Congress. He does not win the party's nomination but decides to run as an independent Republican.
• November 1888 - Edward C. Venable, a Democrat, defeats John Mercer Langston, an independent Republican, in the race for Congress.
• 1889 - John Mercer Langston presents evidence to Congress that his election loss was the result of fraud.
• September 23, 1890 - The House of Representatives votes to unseat Edward C. Venable and seat John Mercer Langston, citing election fraud.
• September 23, 1890–March 3, 1891 - John Mercer Langston serves as Virginia's first African American congressman.
• November 1890 - James F. Epes, a Democrat, defeats John Mercer Langston, a Republican, for a seat in the House of Representatives.
• January 16, 1891 - John Mercer Langston speaks in the House of Representatives in support of the so-called Force Bill, which would supervise elections to guarantee blacks fair treatment.
• 1892 - The Republican Party nominates John Mercer Langston for Congress but he declines to run.
• 1894 - From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol, a memoir by John Mercer Langston, is published.
• November 15, 1897 - John Mercer Langston dies at his home in Washington, D.C."
Langston University John Mercer Langston Burial Site
"A long lost burial site was discovered. While visiting a funeral burial at Woodlawn Cemetary in Washington DC., a Langston University Alum wondered upon the burial site of John Mercer Langston. He is the founder of Langston University, Langston University"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c08qJfUbVs
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Rest in peace John Mercer Langston
Images
1. John Mercer Langston
2. 1854 Admission to the Ohio Bar for John Mercer Langston
3. Educating the Freedmen
4. First Graduating class of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute
Background from
"John Mercer Langston (1829–1897)
Contributed by Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography
John Mercer Langston served as Virginia's first African American member of Congress (1890–1891) and as the first president of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University). The son of a white Louisa County planter and the woman he freed, Langston grew up in Ohio, where, as an attorney and local office holder, he helped recruit African American troopsduring the American Civil War (1861–1865). After the war, his involvement with the Freedmen's Bureau as inspector of schools brought him back to Virginia. In 1870 Langston became dean of Howard University's law school and served as acting president of the university from 1873 until 1875. In 1885, the Virginia State Board of Education named Langston president of the new Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. The new school grew under his leadership, but the Democrat-packed board of visitors did not renew his contract two years later. In 1888 he sought the Republican nomination for Congress, but party leader William Mahone engineered his defeat. Langston ran an independent campaign in which a Democrat was named the winner. Langston disputed the election results, however, and eventually Congress seated him for the final months of his term. He lost reelection and returned to Washington, D.C., where he published an autobiography. He died in Washington in 1897. MORE...
Early Years
Langston was born free in Louisa County on December 14, 1829. He was the youngest son of a white planter, Ralph Quarles, and his mistress, Lucy Jane Langston, whom he purchased and freed in 1806. She was of mixed African and American Indian ancestry. Langston later emphasized that the views of his father "with regard to slavery and the management of slaves upon a plantation by overseers, were peculiar and unusual." The former enslaved woman and her former owner had a genuine love for each other but could not legally marry in Virginia. They both died early in 1834 and Langston later wrote that they were buried side by side.
Langston was taken to live with his guardian in Ohio, where Langston grew up and graduated from Oberlin College in 1849. He earned his MA in 1852 and graduated from the college's seminary in 1853. He also studied law and in 1854 was admitted to the bar. In 1855, Langston won election as clerk of the township of Brownhelm, making him one of the first African Americans to hold elective office in Ohio. He quickly became a major figure in the abolitionist movement and in the state's nascent Republican Party. In Oberlin, on October 25, 1854, Langston married Caroline Matilda Wall. They had three sons and two daughters, one of whom died in childhood.
During the Civil War, Langston worked tirelessly to recruit men for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts regiments as well as for the 5th Ohio Regiment of the United States Colored Troops. He registered for the draft in June 1863 and desired to serve as a colonel in the United States Army, but the war ended before he could obtain a commission.
In Higher Education
Langston began traveling throughout the South, where he spoke before large black and white audiences about the importance of African American suffrage and education. In May 1867 he joined the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands as an agent observing schools in Virginia, and on June 17, 1867, he became the bureau's general inspector of schools. The following year, he was appointed a law professor at Howard University, in Washington, D.C., and he headed the department when it opened in January 1869. Named dean of the law school in 1870, Langston served as vice president and acting president of the university from December 1873 to July 1875. Howard awarded an honorary LLD to Langston in 1874. He continued to be active in the Republican Party, and in 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him a member of the Board of Health for the District of Columbia. In 1877 President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him minister resident and consul general to Haiti, a post in which he served until resigning in 1885. In 1883 Langston published a collection of his speeches entitled Freedom and Citizenship.
Virginia's State Board of Education appointed Langston president of the nascent Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University), on November 19, 1885. He accepted in December and took office in January 1886 at the campus near Petersburg. One of the principal purposes of the institute, the first state-supported college of its kind in the South, was to prepare African American teachers for the state's public school system. It was pioneering in the South, too, by being coeducational and by employing both male and female instructors.
During Langston's first year, the institute had 150 students, but its one large building had not been completed, and the financial management of the construction project had become mired in scandal. Nevertheless, he was able to continue a state-mandated teachers' institute on the campus in the summer of 1886, and he persuaded the General Assembly to increase appropriations to finish the main building. Langston expanded the regular teacher education program to include such subjects as astronomy, civics, English literature, and rhetoric, and he established six new professorships.
Enrollment increased to almost 200 in his second year, and the summer institute in 1887 attracted 131 teachers. By then, however, unsympathetic Democrats in the assembly had replaced the Republican-appointed members of the board of visitors and the new board clashed with Langston over his vision for the school's future. The students publicly supported Langston, but when the board of visitors met on December 6, 1887, less than a month before his contract expired, the board elected James H. Johnstonto succeed Langston as president.
A Disputed Election
On January 2, 1888, Langston attended a Republican Party conference in Farmville, where African Americans urged him to run for the House of Representatives from the Fourth District. The district had a black-majority population and encompassed the city of Petersburg and the counties of Amelia, Brunswick, Dinwiddie, Greensville, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Nottoway, Powhatan, Prince Edward, Prince George, and Sussex. Langston sought the Republican Party nomination, but the party's white leader, the former Confederate general William Mahone, opposed him and supported a white Republican, Richard W. Arnold. Even though Mahone had been the principal organizer of a biracial coalition of Republicans and Readjusters that had enacted the law that created the normal institute, he balked at allowing African Americans to rise high in the party's ranks.
As a consequence of Mahone's influence within the party, Arnold won the nomination at the September convention, but Langston campaigned for the congressional seat vigorously as an independent Republican. The district's African Americans supported him rather than Arnold against the wishes of the party's white leaders, and when the ballots were counted, Arnold had received a mere 3,207 votes and Langston 12,657. But the Democratic Party nominee, Edward C. Venable, was declared the victor with 13,298 votes.
Langston challenged the result after the Fifty-First Congress assembled in 1889 and presented a massive amount of evidence of dishonesty in the conduct of the election and in the tabulation of the votes. Democrats replied with charges of Republican misconduct, too, but on September 23, 1890, the House of Representatives voted to unseat Venable and awarded the seat to Langston. During the preliminaries to the vote, Virginia Congressman Charles T. O'Ferrall, hoping to prevent action by the absence of a quorum, persuaded the other Democrats to refuse to answer when the clerk called the roll. The Speaker of the House of Representatives finally ordered the clerk to record the silent Democrats as present and declared Langston elected.
In Congress
The first African American to win a seat in Congress from Virginia, Langston actually served only from September 23, 1890, to March 3, 1891, and Congress was not in session in October and November during that time. During the session he sat on the Committee on Education. He proposed a national literacy test to vote in federal elections as an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which he believed could increase literacy for both black and whites, and introduced a bill to establish a national industrial university for African Americans. Both proposals failed.
Langston delivered two speeches in the House of Representatives, one on the merchant marine, and the more important one on January 16, 1891, in support of the so-called Force Bill that the Senate had refused to consider. It would have provided for supervision of federal elections to guarantee African Americans fair treatment. Langston condemned Democrats for opposing full civil rights for all citizens, including southern white men who were also sometimes victims of voter frauds. "The question," Langston stated, "is, shall every freeman, shall every American citizen, shall every American elector in the North and in the South, everywhere in the country, be permitted to wield a free ballot in the interests of our common country and our free institutions?"
Despite continued opposition from Mahone, Langston ran for reelection in the autumn of 1890 against Democrat James F. Epes in another campaign that probably featured fraud and intimidation of voters. The official tally was 9,991 for Langston and 13,325 for Epes, but Langston chose not to challenge the outcome. The Republican Party again nominated Langston for Congress in 1892, but he declined to run.
Later Years
Langston's 1888 campaign highlighted personal and political differences between him and Frederick Douglass, one of his most outspoken critics. The radically different upbringings of the two prominent African American leaders had not, at first, brought them into conflict. The men possibly saw each other as rivals by the mid-1870s, and the division may have been intensified by callous remarks that Douglass made in 1884 concerning one of Langston's sons, Frank Langston, who had been tried for and ultimately acquitted of murder.
The two men diverged politically on the subject of black emigration from the South. On the one hand, Langston viewed emigration by freedpeople to the North or West as a positive demonstration of exercising their new freedom, both physically and psychologically, in search of expanded opportunities. Douglass, on the other hand, believed that the best way for freedpeople to achieve prosperity was to remain in the South and farm the lands they knew.
Whatever the reasons, by 1888 they viewed each other as rivals, and in 1888 Mahone asked Douglass to write a letter opposing Langston's candidacy. Douglass agreed, and his public letter provoked outrage from the local black community in Virginia and increased Langston's popular appeal in the Fourth District. Furthermore, Douglass's public opposition to Langston's candidacy drew criticism from black newspapers like the Richmond Planet as well as the New York Age.
Early in the 1890s, Langston moved back to Washington, D.C., where he published his autobiography, From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol, in 1894. His grandnephew, the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, later memorialized his tenacity in the face of discrimination in describing Langston's response when local whites erected a barrier to prevent him from passing through their section of the capital city. Langston, "got out, took his axe and chopped it down while the coachman held his gloves. From then on, without hindrance, he rode behind his snow-white horses through the street[s] of Washington."
Langston continued to practice law and speak out on issues of race and political equality until he died at his Washington home on November 15, 1897. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, in Washington, D.C.
Major Works
• Freedom and Citizenship (1883)
• From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol (1894)
Time Line
• December 14, 1829 - John Mercer Langston is born free in Louisa County. He is the son a white planter and his free black mistress.
• 1834 - Ralph Quarles, a white planter, and Lucy Jane Langston, his free black mistress, both die. They were the parents of John Mercer Langston.
• 1849 - John Mercer Langston graduates with a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College.
• 1852 - John Mercer Langston graduates with a master's degree from Oberlin College.
• 1854 - John Mercer Langston is admitted to the Ohio bar.
• October 25, 1854 - John Mercer Langston and Caroline Matilda Wall marry, in Oberlin, Ohio. They will have three sons and two daughters.
• 1855 - John Mercer Langston wins election as clerk of the township of Brownhelm, Ohio, making him one of the first African Americans to hold elective office in Ohio.
• June 1863 - John Mercer Langston registers for the draft and seeks an officer's commission, but the Civil War ends before he receives one.
• May 1867 - John Mercer Langston joins the Freedmen's Bureau as an agent observing schools in Virginia.
• June 17, 1867 - John Mercer Langston becomes the Freedmen's Bureau's general inspector of schools.
• 1868 - Howard University, in Washington, D.C., appoints John Mercer Langston a law professor.
• January 1869 - When it opens, John Mercer Langston is head of the law department at Howard University, in Washington, D.C.
• 1870 - Howard University, in Washington, D.C., appoints John Mercer Langston dean of its law school.
• 1871 - President Ulysses S. Grant appoints John Mercer Langston a member of the Board of Health for the District of Columbia.
• December 1873–July 1875 - John Mercer Langston serves as vice president and acting president of Howard University, in Washington, D.C.
• 1874 - Howard University, in Washington, D.C., awards John Mercer Langston an honorary LLD.
• 1877–1885 - In the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes, John Mercer Langston serves as minister resident and consul general to Haiti.
• 1883 - John Mercer Langston publishes a collection of his speeches entitled Freedom and Citizenship.
• November 19, 1885 - Virginia's State Board of Education appoints John Mercer Langston president of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University).
• December 6, 1887 - The board of visitors for Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute elects James H. Johnston to succeed John Mercer Langston as president.
• 1888 - At the behest of William Mahone, Frederick Douglass writes a letter opposing the congressional candidacy of John Mercer Langston.
• January 2, 1888 - John Mercer Langston attends a Republican Party conference in Farmville, where he is urged to run for Congress. He does not win the party's nomination but decides to run as an independent Republican.
• November 1888 - Edward C. Venable, a Democrat, defeats John Mercer Langston, an independent Republican, in the race for Congress.
• 1889 - John Mercer Langston presents evidence to Congress that his election loss was the result of fraud.
• September 23, 1890 - The House of Representatives votes to unseat Edward C. Venable and seat John Mercer Langston, citing election fraud.
• September 23, 1890–March 3, 1891 - John Mercer Langston serves as Virginia's first African American congressman.
• November 1890 - James F. Epes, a Democrat, defeats John Mercer Langston, a Republican, for a seat in the House of Representatives.
• January 16, 1891 - John Mercer Langston speaks in the House of Representatives in support of the so-called Force Bill, which would supervise elections to guarantee blacks fair treatment.
• 1892 - The Republican Party nominates John Mercer Langston for Congress but he declines to run.
• 1894 - From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol, a memoir by John Mercer Langston, is published.
• November 15, 1897 - John Mercer Langston dies at his home in Washington, D.C."
Langston University John Mercer Langston Burial Site
"A long lost burial site was discovered. While visiting a funeral burial at Woodlawn Cemetary in Washington DC., a Langston University Alum wondered upon the burial site of John Mercer Langston. He is the founder of Langston University, Langston University"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c08qJfUbVs
FYI LTC Jeff ShearerSGT Philip RoncariCWO3 Dennis M.SGT (Join to see)PO3 Bob McCordSGT Jim Arnold PO3 Phyllis Maynard Maj Robert Thornton Cynthia Croft PO1 H Gene Lawrence PVT Karl Goode PO2 Kevin Parker SGT James Murphy SFC Michael Young MSgt Ken "Airsoldier" Collins-Hardy SGT Rick Colburn
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