John Mercer Langston
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John Mercer Langston
John Mercer Langston (December 14, 1829 – November 15, 1897) was an American abolitionist, attorney, educator, activist, diplomat, and politician. He was the founding dean of the law school at Howard University and helped create the department. He was the first president of what is now Virginia State University, a historically black college. He was elected a U.S. Representative from Virginia and wrote ''From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol; Or, the First and Only Negro Representative in Congress From the Old Dominion''. 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. He was the first Representative of color from Virginia. Joseph Hayne Rainey, the black Republican congressman from South Carolina, had been elected in 1870 during the Reconstruction era. In the Jim Crow era of the later 19th century, Langston was one of five African Americans elected to Congress fro ...
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Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna. The capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond; Virginia Beach is the most-populous city, and Fairfax County is the most-populous political subdivision. The Commonwealth's population was over 8.65million, with 36% of them living in the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. The area's history begins with several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607, the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent English colony in the New World. Virginia's state nickname, the Old Dominion, is a reference to this status. Slave labor and land acquired from displaced native tribes fueled the ...
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Masters Of Arts
A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have typically studied subjects within the scope of the humanities and social sciences, such as history, literature, languages, linguistics, public administration, political science, communication studies, law or diplomacy; however, different universities have different conventions and may also offer the degree for fields typically considered within the natural sciences and mathematics. The degree can be conferred in respect of completing courses and passing examinations, research, or a combination of the two. The degree of Master of Arts traces its origins to the teaching license or of the University of Paris, designed to produce "masters" who were graduate teachers of their subjects. Europe Czech Republic and ...
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Disfranchisement After Reconstruction Era
Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era in the United States, especially in the Southern United States, was based on a series of laws, new constitutions, and practices in the South that were deliberately used to prevent black citizens from registering to vote and voting. These measures were enacted by the former Confederate states at the turn of the 20th century. Efforts were made in Maryland, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Their actions were designed to thwart the objective of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, which prohibited states from depriving voters of their voting rights on the basis of race. The laws were frequently written in ways to be ostensibly non-racial on paper (and thus not violate the Fifteenth Amendment), but were implemented in ways that purposely suppressed black voters. Beginning in the 1870s, white racists used violence by domestic terrorism groups (such as the Ku Klux Klan), as well as fraud, to suppress black v ...
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Jim Crow
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the South had adopted laws, beginning in the late 19th century, banning discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white Southern Democrat-dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. Jim Crow laws were enforced until 1965. In practice, Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America and in some others, beginning in the 1870s. Jim Crow laws were upheld in 1896 in the case of '' Plessy vs. Ferguson'', in which the Supreme Court laid out its "separate but equal" legal doctrine concerning facil ...
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Reconstruction Era (United States)
The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877. During Reconstruction, attempts were made to rebuild the country after the bloody Civil War, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and to redress the political, social, and economic legacies of slavery. During the era, Congress abolished slavery, ended the remnants of Confederate secession in the South, and passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution (the Reconstruction Amendments) ostensibly guaranteeing the newly freed slaves (freedmen) the same civil rights as those of whites. Following a year of violent attacks against Blacks in the South, in 1866 Congress federalized the protection of civil rights, and placed formerly secessionist states under the control of the U.S. military, requiring ex-Confederate states to adopt guarantees for the civil rights of freedm ...
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Joseph Rainey
Joseph Hayne Rainey (June 21, 1832 – August 1, 1887) was an American politician. He was the first black person to serve in the United States House of Representatives and the second black person (after Hiram Revels) to serve in the United States Congress. His service included time as presiding officer of the House of Representatives. Born into a family of farmers and planters, Rainey was a member of the Republican Party. Early life and education Joseph Hayne Rainey was born in 1832 in Georgetown, South Carolina. His mother Grace was of Indigenous and French descent. His father, Edward Rainey had been allowed by his master to work independently to earn money and develop a successful business as a barber. He paid a portion of his income to his master as required by law. Edward saved a substantial sum, and by the 1840s, he purchased his freedom and that of his wife and two sons. With opportunities for education severely limited for black people, Rainey followed his father into t ...
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United States House Of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the Lower house, lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States Senate, Senate being the Upper house, upper chamber. Together they comprise the national Bicameralism, bicameral legislature of the United States. The House's composition was established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The House is composed of representatives who, pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, sit in single member List of United States congressional districts, congressional districts allocated to each U.S. state, state on a basis of population as measured by the United States Census, with each district having one representative, provided that each state is entitled to at least one. Since its inception in 1789, all representatives have been directly elected, although universal suffrage did not come to effect until after ...
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List Of African-American Firsts
African-Americans are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group in the United States. The first achievements by African-Americans in diverse fields have historically marked footholds, often leading to more widespread cultural change. The shorthand phrase for this is "breaking the color barrier". One commonly cited example is that of Jackie Robinson, who became the Baseball color line, first African-American of the modern era to become a Major League Baseball player in 1947, ending 60 years of segregated Negro leagues. 17th century 1670s 1670 * First African-American to own land in Boston: Zipporah Potter Atkins 18th century 1730s–1770s 1738 * First free African-American community: Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose (later named Fort Mose) in Spanish Florida 1746 * First known African-American (and slave) to compose a work of literature: Lucy Terry with her poem "Bars Fight", composed in 1746🖉 and first published in 1855 in Josiah Holland ...
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Freedman
A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), emancipation (granted freedom as part of a larger group), or self-purchase. A fugitive slave is a person who escaped enslavement by fleeing. Ancient Rome Rome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become plebeian citizens. The act of freeing a slave was called ''manumissio'', from ''manus'', "hand" (in the sense of holding or possessing something), and ''missio'', the act of releasing. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed not only passive freedom from ownership, but active political freedom ''(libertas)'', including the right to vote. A slave who had acquired ''libertas'' was known as a ''libertus'' ("freed person", feminine ''liberta'') in relation to his former master, who was called his or her patron ''( ...
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Historically Black College
Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving the African-American community. Most of these institutions were founded in the years after the American Civil War and are concentrated in the Southern United States. During the period of segregation prior to the Civil Rights Act, the majority of American institutions of higher education served predominantly white students, and disqualified or limited black American enrollment. For a century after the end of slavery in the United States in 1865, most colleges and universities in the Southern United States prohibited all African Americans from attending, while institutions in other parts of the country regularly employed quotas to limit admissions of Black people. HBCUs were established to provide more opportunities to African Americans and are largely responsible for establ ...
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Virginia State University
Virginia State University (VSU or Virginia State) is a public historically Black land-grant university in Ettrick, Virginia. Founded on , Virginia State developed as the United States's first fully state-supported four-year institution of higher learning for Black Americans. The university is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. History Virginia State University was founded on March 6, 1882, when the legislature passed a bill to charter the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. The bill was sponsored by Delegate Alfred W. Harris, a Black attorney whose offices were in Petersburg, but who lived in and represented Dinwiddie County in the General Assembly. A hostile lawsuit delayed opening day for nineteen months, until October 1, 1883. In 1902, the legislature revised the charter act to curtail the collegiate program and to change the name to Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute. In 1920, the land-grant program for Black students was moved from a pri ...
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