John Mercer Langston

John Mercer Langston
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 4th district
In office September 23, 1890 – March 3, 1891
Preceded by	Edward Carrington Venable
Succeeded by	James F. Epes
United States Minister Resident to the Dominican Republic Acting
In office March 26, 1884 – June 23, 1885
President	Chester A. Arthur Grover Cleveland
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	John Thompson
United States Minister Resident to Haiti
In office November 27, 1877 – June 30, 1885
President	Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Arthur Grover Cleveland
Preceded by	Ebenezer Bassett
Succeeded by	George Washington Williams
Personal details
Born	John Mercer Langston (1829-12-14)December 14, 1829 Louisa, Virginia, U.S.
Died	November 15, 1897(1897-11-15) (aged 67) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Caroline Wall
Children	5
Education	Oberlin College (BA, MA)
Signature

John Mercer Langston (December 14, 1829 – November 15, 1897) was an American abolitionist, attorney, educator, activist, diplomat, and politician. He was the founding 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. He was elected a U.S. Representative from Virginia and wrote From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol; Or, the First and Only Negro Representative in Congress From the Old Dominion.

Born free in Virginia to a freedwoman of mixed ethnicity and a white English immigrant planter, in 1888 Langston was elected to the U.S. Congress. He was 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 19th century, Langston was one of 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 blacks, excluding them 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 authorizing the enforcement of their constitutional franchise rights.

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] The brothers were the grandfather and great-uncle, respectively, of the renowned poet Langston Hughes.