From HNN : The 'Obama Before Obama'
Source: WaPo (6-7-08)

LOUISA, Va. -- Planted in the lawn at the courthouse on West Main Street
here is a gray historical marker that draws little attention. It proudly
proclaims that the country's first black elected official was native son
John Mercer Langston, born in this central Virginia county, the son of a
wealthy white planter and an emancipated slave of Indian and black ancestry.

History seems to whisper more often than it shouts. Langston was one of the
most extraordinary men of the 19th century, and yet his achievements --
prominent abolitionist, first black congressman from Virginia, founder of
what would become the Howard University law school -- have largely been
forgotten. In the arc of American advancement toward black political
empowerment, Langston represents the symbolic beginning. Elected township
clerk of Brownhelm, Ohio, on April 2, 1855, he became, by many accounts, the
first "Negro" elevated to public office by popular vote.

It took 153 years to get from John Mercer Langston to Barack Hussein Obama,
a journey that endured the dashed hopes of Reconstruction and the oppression
of Jim Crow to arrive at a moment that has stunned even those optimistic
about America's racial progress. An underdog black politician has secured a
major party's presidential nomination in a country where less than 4 percent
of its elected officials are African Americans?

Posted on HNN - History News Network, Monday, June 9, 2008

-- 
Jon Kukla
www.JonKukla.com

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