Memoirs of a Reconstruction-Era Member of Congress
From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol or the First and Only Negro Representative in Congress from the Old Dominion
Publication: Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1894. First Edition.
Notes: Langston’s autobiography is a sweeping personal and political memoir that traces his singular life through one of the most turbulent chapters of American history. His guiding philosophy appears on the title page: “Self-reliance the secret of success”—a distillation of Langston’s deeply held belief in perseverance, education, and personal dignity as tools for advancement.
Langston writes much of the book in the third person, casting himself as both subject and symbol. He claims that his formerly enslaved mother "was possessed of slight proportion of negro blood." He also claims, rather paradoxically, that his mother's mother was a "full-blooded Indian woman" related to Pocahontos. How his mother had the misfortune to become enslaved is not explained, but in the style of many American biographies, the myth matters as much as the facts. The book traces Langston's education, his legal and diplomatic career, his selection to head Howard University's law school, and the bitter 1888 election that put him into Congress as the only Black representative sent to Washington from Virginia in the 19th century.
Langston only served part of his term representing Virginia's fourth district; his election was bitterly contested on racial grounds and he was not seated in Congress until September 23,1890, eighteen months into his two-year term. The entire Democratic delegation in the House walked out of the chamber when he was sworn in. The Virginia Republican party, whose racist faction was growing in power, determined "no negro must be allowed to represent the district in Congress" (p. 445), and Langston was not renominated for a second term. Virginia would not elect another Black member of Congress until Robert "Bobby" Scott, just over a century later.
While some aspects of Langston's memoir plays to American myths, he was forthright about his lack of religion. He initially declined an appointment to Howard University, which had a religious test for employment, because "he was not a member of any church and had not concluded to join one." Howard's trustees waived the requirement.
The historian Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego describes Langston as a figure of “progressive pragmatism,” emblematic of African Americans who “sought pragmatic local alliances where they could find them and worked to retain and expand their freedom and citizenship, their control over themselves and their hope of belonging to what would become a new American whole” (Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 117, No. 3, 2009).
A major work of African American autobiography.
[x], 11–534, [4: blank] pages, plus sixteen inserted leaves with half-tone illustrations.
Edition + Condition: First edition. A very good copy with wear to the edges of the publisher's blue cloth, cracking hinges, and some spotting to the pages, particularly at the beginning. The spine gilt is still bright.
Item No: #365119
Price: $1,850