John Mercer Langston (December 14, 1829 – November 15, 1897) was an American abolitionist, attorney, educator, activist, diplomat, and politician.

Born free in Virginia to a freedwoman of mixed ethnicity and a white English immigrant planter, in 1888 Langston was elected to the U.S. Congress.

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.

In 1835 the older brothers Gideon and Charles started at the Oberlin Preparatory School, where they were the first African-American students to be admitted.

Wall freed his mixed-race daughters Sara and Caroline, and sent them to Ohio to be raised in an affluent Quaker household and educated.

[1] When Langston was serving as dean of Howard University's Law School, which he developed (see below), he and his family met James Carroll Napier, a student there.

He was appointed in 1911 as Register of the Treasury in President William Howard Taft's administration and was one of four members of his "Black Cabinet".

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 believed that black men's service in the war had earned their right to vote, and that the franchise was fundamental to their creating an equal place in society.

In 1864 Langston chaired the committee whose agenda was ratified by the black National Convention: they called for abolition of slavery, support of racial unity and self-help, and equality before the law.

[1] To accomplish this program, the convention founded the National Equal Rights League and elected Langston president.

Like the later National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded in the early 20th century, the League was based in state and local organizations.

"[1] After the Civil 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.

Langston was passed over for the permanent position of president of Howard University School of Law; the selection committee refused to disclose the reason.

The 43rd Congress of the United States passed the bill in February 1875 and it was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1875.

[18] In 1877 President Rutherford Hayes appointed Langston as U.S. Minister to Haiti;[18] he also served as chargé d'affaires to the Dominican Republic.

He served for the remaining six months of the term, but lost his bid for reelection as conservative white Democrats had regained political control of Virginia.

[1] In a period of increasing disenfranchisement of blacks in the South, he was one of five African Americans elected to Congress during the Jim Crow era of the last decade of the nineteenth century.

[22] In 1890 Langston was named as a member of the board of trustees of St. Paul Normal and Industrial School, a historically black college, when it was incorporated by the Virginia General Assembly.

He died at his home, Hillside Cottage at 2225 Fourth Street NW in Washington, DC, on the morning of November 15.

Future leaders who attended this school included professional football player Ike Thomas, civil rights activist Mamie Phipps Clark, and physician Edith Mae Irby Jones.