John Mercer Langston House – Oberlin

John Mercer Langston

My post on General Giles W. Shurtleff a few days ago mentioned that he had organized the Fifth Ohio regiment of colored troops with the aid of John Mercer Langston, a Negro lawyer and an Oberlin graduate. As author and longtime blog contributor Don Hilton noted in a blog comment, John Mercer Langston "went on to a life of renown." 

Langston's entry on Wikipedia notes, "John Mercer Langston 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.

"In 1888 Langston was elected to the U.S. Congress. He was the first Representative of color from Virginia.

"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. 

"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. 

"John Langston earned a bachelor's degree in 1849 and a master's degree in theology in 1852 from Oberlin College. He is the first known Black to apply to an American law school. 

"Langston would study law (or "read the law", as was the common practice then) as an apprentice under abolitionist attorney and Republican US congressman Philemon Bliss, in nearby Elyria; he was admitted to the Ohio bar—the first Black— in 1854. 

 

"In 1863, when the federal government approved founding of the United States Colored Troops, John Langston was appointed to recruit African Americans to fight for the Union Army. He enlisted hundreds of men for duty in the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth regiments, in addition to 800 for Ohio's first black regiment.

"After the war, Langston was appointed inspector general for the Freedmen's Bureau, a Federal organization that assisted freed slaves and tried to oversee labor contracts in the former Confederate states during the Reconstruction era." 

 

That's quite a list of impressive, one-of-a-kind accomplishments, with Oberlin College and Ohio figuring prominently in his life.

The house where John Mercer Langston lived in Oberlin still stands at 207 E. College Avenue. It was built in 1855, and according to this Wiki article, was home to Langston from 1856 to 1867. The article also notes that he was elected to the position of town clerk in Brownhelm Township,  "the first known electoral victory of its kind by an African American in the United States."

Here's a 1968 photo of the house on  E. College Avenue. In 1975, it was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Believe it or not, I've been driving by this house every day on the way to work for the past two months because of road construction detours! Here are two views from yesterday, one on the way to work and one on the way home.

It appears to still be owned by a private party. I am fairly surprised that Oberlin College hasn't purchased this home and made it into a museum and learning center for kids, as it is located directly across from a school.