[8] Anna Langford died of lung cancer on September 17, 2008, at her home in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago at the age of 90.

[8] Anna Langford was born in Springfield, Ohio, to an African-American father, Arthur J. Riggs Jr. and a white mother, Alice Reed.

[10] The racial discrimination leading to her mother's death impacted Langford's life and her involvement with the Civil Rights Movement.

[8] As a black and female attorney she was refused office space in downtown Chicago and as a result set up a neighborhood practice in the Park Manor neighborhood of Chicago with already established criminal defense and family law attorneys Norman Robinson and Muriel Farmer to start the firm Robinson Farmer and Langford.

[8] She spent several weeks in rural Mississippi as a volunteer attorney at the office where three civil rights workers were kidnapped and murdered by suspected members of the KKK.

Later Langford met with Martin Luther King Jr. in the living room of her home in 1966 to plan a march on Cicero, Illinois to promote racial integration within the suburb.

[8] After Washington's fatal heart attack in 1987, Langford mediated between mayoral hopefuls Aldermen Eugene Sawyer and Timothy C.

After her death, the Chicago Public Schools renamed Nicholas Copernicus Elementary located in the Englewood neighborhood in her honor, Anna R. Langford Community Academy in 2010.