According to the Chicago Sun Times, even in illness, the woman who became known as an outspoken supporter of Mayor Harold Washington was able to take in both political parties’ conventions — by television — in recent weeks.
Ms. Langford was born in Springfield, Ohio, and moved to Chicago after her parents died when she was quite young. It was her mother’s death, an act of racism, that would propel her into the world of civil rights activism. Ms. Langford’s mother, a white woman, went to an Ohio hospital suffering from appendicitis. But when her biracial children showed up, hospital staff ordered her transferred to a hospital serving African Americans. En route, her appendix burst, and she died. Isn’t that a shame?
In Chicago, Ms. Langford was raised by family friends. She was a graduate of Hyde Park High School and Roosevelt University. She became a lawyer in 1956, after attending John Marshall Law School. She was a civil rights activist from the start. According to media reports, Ms. Langford welcomed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. into her living room in 1966 for a planning meeting for the march on Cicero to promote integration. In 1971, she won her first aldermanic election, putting her in charge of the 16th Ward that included parts of Englewood, Back of the Yards and Gage Park.
She lost her 1975 re-election bid, lost again in an attempted comeback in 1979, then saw victory in two following elections in the 1980s. And in the early ’80s, Ms. Langford challenged a onetime Illinois congressman named Harold Washington to either run for Chicago mayor, or she would. Ms. Langford is survived by her only son, three grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Let us pay tribute to the legacy of a foot soldier in the civil rights movement.
Filed under: Anna Langford, Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Black Political Thought 