A daily Black History Month fact that has nothing to do with George Washington Carver, MLK, Jr., or Harriet Tubman. Promise!

When John Mercer Langston, the son of a Virginia slave and her white master, was elected as town clerk in Oberlin Ohio in 1855, he became the first African American elected official. By the age of 14, Langston had enrolled at Oberlin College, where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees, and, despite being rejected from law school, he passed the Ohio bar in 1854.

In his adult life, Langston was active in the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad. After recruiting blacks for the Union army during the Civil War, Langston was appointed inspector general of the Freedman's Bureau. Shortly after, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he established Howard University's Law School. In 1888, Langston ran for Congress as a Republican. When he finally won his seat after a prolonged battle with the incumbent Democrat, he became the first black man elected to U.S. Congress from Virginia, and the last for another century.

Langston, the great uncle of the infamous Langston Hughes, died in 1897.

This concludes your daily dose of BHM.