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 the first black man 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. In 1855 Langston became the country's first black elected official when he was elected town clerk of Brownhelm Township. 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 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 Independent. 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.

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.

The poet Langston Hughes is a blood relative.