1877-09-28: (John Mercer Langston Appointed U.S.

1877-09-28: (John Mercer Langston Appointed U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, the Second African American to Hold the Post, Continuing the Pattern of Black Diplomats Representing America in the Black Republic): On September 28, 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed John Mercer Langston to serve as U.S. ambassador to Haiti. Born on December 14, 1829, in Louisa County, Virginia, Langston was the son of a white slaveholding father and an enslaved mother of Black and Native American descent. He became the first African American elected to public office in the United States when he won a township clerk position in Ohio in 1855. His appointment to Haiti continued the pattern established with Bassett: the United States sending accomplished Black diplomats to the one nation where their race was considered an asset rather than a liability. Langston later became the first African American elected to Congress from Virginia in 1890. His service in Haiti placed him within a tradition of African American engagement with the Black republic that stretched from Frederick Douglass to the present, a relationship in which Black Americans saw in Haiti both a mirror of their aspirations and a warning about the obstacles that awaited liberation without economic sovereignty.