Community and College
Sponsor
Symposium on John Mercer Langston
Plan now to attend a free public symposium on
"John Mercer Langston and Oberlin's Antebellum African American
Heritage" on Saturday, September 26 from 1 to 5 p.m. at Historic
First Church at North Main and West Lorain Streets. This community
and college event is sponsored by O.H.I.O. together with the
Oberlin College History and African American Studies departments,
the Oberlin College Archives, members of the Oberlin Student
Cooperative Association and the Friends of Freedom Society (the
Ohio Underground Railroad Association). The program features
Langston's biographers William and Aimee Cheek, as well as
representatives from various local organizations, and will include
information tables and refreshments.
John
Mercer Langston (1829-1897) was born
free in Louisa County, Virginia. Langston's father, a white
plantation owner, and his mother, a freedwoman, both died in 1834
and he was sent north to be educated. He graduated from Oberlin
College in 1849, and became the first African American lawyer in
Ohio. He later became the head of the Freedmen's Bureau, the first
African American Congressman from Virginia, and the founder and
first dean of the Howard University Law School, among his many
accomplishments.
The home where Langston and his family lived at 207
East College Street in Oberlin from
1856 to 1871 is designated as a National Historic Landmark. It is
also listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a
City of Oberlin historic landmark. The house is one of about sixty
National Historic Landmarks in the state of Ohio and is featured
in many publications on African American historic sites. It is one
of two pre Civil War African American historic houses in Oberlin
that have been designated as National Historic Landmarks; the
other is the Wilson Bruce Evans House at 33 East Vine Street.
Today the house is owned by the Oberlin Student Cooperative
Association. Oberlin has various other places named in honor of
Langston, including Langston Middle School, Langston Hall (a
dormitory at Oberlin College), and the Kendal-at-Oberlin
retirement community's Langston Express (a dining facility).
Langston's birthplace in Louisa County, Virginia is the site of a
Virginia Department of Transportation historical marker erected in
1996. His brother Charles' home in Chillicothe, Ohio was
demolished to make way for a parking lot in the 1950's, but
efforts are presently underway by the Friends of Freedom Society
and others to mark the site.
For more information about the symposium, call O.H.I.O. at
774-1700.
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