African American Advocate

Opportunities and Constraints.

John Mercer Langston spent his life challenging racial boundaries and contributing to their breakdown. His father was a plantation owner who scandalized his neighbors in Louisa County, Virginia, by living openly with a former slave whom he had freed, Lucy Langston, whose mother was Native American and whose father was African American. Both of Langston's parents died when he was five, leaving him a substantial inheritance and directing that he be raised in the free state of Ohio. There he attended the public schools of Chillicothe. One of his teachers was George B. Vashon, who in 1844 became the first black graduate of Oberlin College, then the most progressive academic institution in the country. Langston also attended Oberlin, taking his bachelor's degree in 1849 and a master's degree in 1852. When he ventured outside the college, however, he encountered the aggressive...