|
Charles Henry Langston (1817–1892), was an American abolitionist and political activist who was active in Ohio and later in Kansas, during and after the American Civil War, where he worked for black suffrage and other civil rights. He was a spokesmen for blacks of Kansas and "the West."〔 Born free in Louisa County, Virginia, he was the son of a wealthy white planter and his common-law African American-Native American wife. His father provided for his education and ensured Langston and his brothers inherited his estate. In 1835 he and his brother Gideon were the first African Americans to attend Oberlin College in Ohio. Langston worked for 30 years for equal rights, suffrage and education in Ohio and Kansas. In 1858, Langston was tried with a white colleague for the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, a ''cause célèbre'' that was a catalyst for increasing support for abolition. That year Langston helped found the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society and, with his younger brother John as president, led it as executive secretary. After the American Civil War, he was appointed as general superintendent of refugees and freedmen for the Freedmen's Bureau in Kansas. In 1872 he was appointed as principal of the Quindaro Freedman's School (later Western University), the first black college west of the Mississippi River. He was an older brother of John Mercer Langston, an accomplished attorney and activist, who had numerous appointed posts, and in 1888 was the first black person elected to the United States Congress from Virginia (and the last for nearly a century). Charles was the grandfather of renowned poet Langston Hughes. ==Early life and education== Langston was born free in 1817 in Louisa County, Virginia, the second of three sons and a daughter born to Lucy Jane Langston, a freedwoman of mixed African-American and Native American descent, and Ralph Quarles, a wealthy white plantation owner from England. Quarles freed Lucy and their daughter Maria in 1806, in the course of what was a common-law relationship of more than 25 years. (Interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia at the time.) Quarles also made provisions for his "natural" (illegitimate) children to inherit his substantial fortune after his death.〔Cheek, William Francis, and Aimee Lee. ''John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829-65''. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989, pp. 11-12.〕 Lucy had three children with another partner before she moved into the Great House and deepened her relationship with Quarles. Their three sons were born after that. Of the older half-siblings, William Langston had the closest relationship with Quarles' sons.〔 Before his death, Ralph Quarles arranged for his Quaker friend William Gooch to be made guardian of his children. As requested by Quarles, after the parents both died in 1833 when John Langston was four, Gooch moved with the boys and their half-brother William Langston to Chillicothe, Ohio, in a free state.〔Frederick J. Blue, (''No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics'' ), Louisiana State University Press, 2006, p. 66.〕 Their father had left his natural sons substantial inheritances that provided for their education and, as adults, enabled them to work for political reform. The oldest brother, Gideon Quarles, looked so much like his father that at age 21 he took the Quarles surname.〔 In 1835 the older brothers Gideon and Charles started at the preparatory school at Oberlin College, where they were the first black students to be admitted. Charles Langston graduated from Oberlin College.〔Richard B. Sheridan, ("Charles Henry Langston and the African American Struggle in Kansas" ), ''Kansas State History'', Winter 1999, accessed 15 December 2008.〕 Their younger brother John Langston also graduated from there. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Charles Henry Langston」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|