John Mercer Langston

Born: December 14, 1829 in Louisa County, Virginia

Died: November 15, 1897 in Washington, District of Columbia

United States Representative, 1890–1891

Republican from Virginia

• Langston, an attorney, abolitionist, educator, diplomat and politician, was one of the most prominent African Americans in the 19th century, Langston was the first African Americans to hold elective office in the U.S. (he was elected township clerk in Brownhelm, Ohio, in 1855), and at the end of his career became the first Black man to represent Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives.
• Langston was born a free person of color in 1829 in Louisa County, Virginia, the youngest of four children of Lucy Jane Langston, a former slave of mixed Native-American and African-American heritage, and his white father, Ralph Quarles, a plantation owner and a Revolutionary War captain.
• When both of his parents died in 1834, Langston went to live with his older brothers Gideon and Charles in the free state of Ohio.
• Langston followed his older brothers to Oberlin College and received a master's degree in theology in 1852; studied law in Elyria, Ohio; was admitted to the bar in 1854; and became the first African American licensed to practice law in Ohio. 
• Langston was active in the antislavery movement and during the Civil War, took an active part in recruiting for the Union's first Black regiment, the Massachusetts 54th, as well as the Massachusetts 55th and the Ohio 5th.
• After the war, he was appointed inspector general of the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands and soon moved to Washington, D.C., where he practiced law; was dean of the law department at Howard University 1869-1876; appointed and commissioned by President Grant as a member of the Board of Health of the District of Columbia in 1871; and from 1877 to 1885 Langston was U.S. minister to Haiti and chargé d'affaires at San Domingo.
• Langston returned to Virginia to serve as president of the recently established state college for African Americans, the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University), in Petersburg, Va.
• In 1888 Langston ran for the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's Fourth Congressional District as an independent Republican. The election was fraught with substantial fraud, bribery and vote-suppression, and his Democratic opponent Edward Venable was declared the winner. Langston challenged the election results and won after almost two years in litigation. He served from Sept. 23, 1890 to March 3, 1891.
• He lost his bid for reelection and spent the rest of his life dividing his time between Petersburg, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and he completed his autobiography, From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol.
• He died in Washington on November 15, 1897 at the age of 67.
• His grandnephew was the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. 

John Mercer Langston

1890

Print Collection

Photographs and Prints Division

NYPL Digital Collections: John Mercer Langston.