Joseph N. Langan

Joseph N. Langan
Member of the Alabama Legislature
In office 1939–1941
Member of the Alabama Senate
In office 1946–1951
Finance Commissioner of Mobile
In office 1953–1969
Preceded by	Charles A. Baumhauer
Succeeded by	Joseph A. Bailey
Personal details
Born	(1912-03-11)March 11, 1912 Mobile, Alabama
Died	November 4, 2004(2004-11-04) (aged 92) Mobile, Alabama
Political party	Democrat
Spouse	Maude Adele Holcombe
Awards	Bronze Star
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch/service	United States Army Alabama National Guard
Years of service	1931–1952
Rank	Colonel
Unit	infantry
Battles/wars	World War II Korean War

Joseph Nicholas Langan (1912–2004) was an American lawyer, soldier and Democratic politician who served in both houses of the Alabama legislature and became known for his progressive policies in Mobile, Alabama following his military service in World War II. After becoming one of only two legislators to oppose the Boswell Amendment to restrict African American suffrage, Langan failed to win re-election to the Alabama Senate. Undeterred, Langan won election and re-election to the Mobile City Commission, his native city's three-member governing body. Thus he also served several one-year terms as Mayor of Mobile, an office rotated among the three commissioners.

Langan opposed the Dixiecrat movement in the Democratic Party, and became a leading moderate voice in his state, working to extend voting rights for African Americans (who had been essentially disenfranchised since the turn of the century). As a Mobile commissioner, Langan also expanded the city's tax base, including through annexation, and helped found the Mobile Museum of Art.

Early and family life

Joseph Nicholas Langan was born in Mobile, Alabama on March 11, 1912. His father, David Langan, had served for several years as Mobile's tax collector, until 1911. David Langan and his brother then ran a men's clothing store in downtown Mobile. When a hurricane devastated Mobile and destroyed the store in 1916, the Langan family moved to Semmes, a small community in north Mobile County. After World War I, the Langans returned to Mobile and opened a grocery store on Espejo Street.

Raised in a devout Catholic family, Joseph Langan and his siblings attended St. Mary's parochial school before Joseph transferred to the public (white) Murphy High School, graduating in 1931. That same year, he joined the Alabama National Guard, while clerking as an apprentice in his uncle's law firm. At night, he studied for the Alabama bar exam, which he passed in 1936. His further education came through the National Guard and U.S. Army.

Langan married Maude Adele Holcombe in 1943; the couple had no children.

Career

Early military service

Langan enlisted in the Alabama National Guard, and was sent to officer candidate school in 1939. He received his first officer commission on December 21, 1939, as a second lieutenant. Called into the Army during World War II, he was promoted to captain in November 1940, major in July 1942, lieutenant colonel in February 1943 and colonel in December 1945. During the latter years of the war, Langan served with the Thirty-first Dixie Division as a chief of staff in the South Pacific during campaigns in the Philippines and New Guinea, for which he was awarded a Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster.

Alabama legislator

In 1939, Langan ran successfully for a seat in the Alabama House of Representatives. The 27-year-old politician worked for the improvement of Alabama's voting laws and oversaw the installation of voting machines in Mobile. His term was cut short in 1941 with America's entry into World War II.

During his wartime service Langan worked with black soldiers and officers, which opened his eyes to their issues as well as potential. Growing up in the segregated South, Langan had learned to observe the color line, even if he and his family did not always adhere to the status quo. While in the National Guard, Langan witnessed the demeaning effects of segregation on black soldiers and became determined to speak out against such injustices. When he returned to Mobile after the war, he found the city much changed. The shipbuilding industry had grown due to wartime contracts, and rapid industrialization also included expansion of the Army Air Force base at Brookley Field which became the major Air Material Command supply base in the southeastern U.S. At the same time, social tensions and competition during the war had included incidents of racial violence, particularly since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration required defense contractors to hire and promote workers without discrimination. Moreover, in 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued Smith v. Allwright, which outlawed the whites-only primary customary in Alabama. That year, twelve qualified and registered black Mobilians were turned away as they had attempted to vote, as photographers for national magazines documented.

Postwar Alabama politics

In 1946, Langan returned to civilian life and the political arena. Elected to the Alabama State Senate as the only senator representing Mobile County, any new piece of legislation that affected the county had to win his approval before going forward to the legislature. Langan used his position to work toward improving the lives of white and black Mobilians. For example, although judicial handling of Texas voting rights cases had led Alabama's Democratic party to allow black voters in its primary, and the county's population was approximately 1/3 black, only 275 blacks and 19,000 whites were registered to vote in Mobile County in January 1946. The number of registered black voters increased to 691 by the date of the primary, in part as the state Democratic Executive Committee and registration officials only allowed a specified number of blacks to register on a given day. Langan also became an early supporter of equalizing the salaries of white and black public schoolteachers, who taught in a segregated system, shocking some by proposing that part of an increased beer tax the Mobile School Board advocated be used to rectify pay and workload disparities.

Langan supported the candidacy of James E. Folsom for governor and became one of Folsom's leading allies in the state senate. Langan became one of the strongest opponents of the Boswell Amendment, a state constitutional amendment aimed at suppressing the (already limited) black vote by requiring new voters at registration to demonstrate understanding of the U.S. Constitution to a (white) registrar's satisfaction before being allowed to register. Named for state senator E.C. (Bud) Boswell of Geneva, it was the brainchild of Gessner McCorvey, chairman of the State Democratic Committee and a leading lawyer who also served as trustee of the University of Alabama and president of the Alabama Bar Association. The amendment allowed white registrars to use subjective standards to deny applications of new black voters. Langan became one of only two state senators to vote against the amendment, also opposed by Governor Folsom, Alabama's two U.S. Senators and labor unions in the state. His progressive stance earned the support of civil rights leaders such as John L. LeFlore, a US postal carrier in Mobile who had led the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1925. Understanding that the local registrar's office was the key to enabling registration for African Americans, Langan urged Folsom to appoint E. J. "Gunny" Gonzales to a vacant seat on the Mobile County Board of Registrars. Gonzales likewise opposed the Boswell Amendment, which a majority (54%) of state voters approved in 1946, overriding the voters in Birmingham and Mobile (which rejected it). Relating his experience on the Board of Registrars, Gonzales would testify for the ten African American plaintiffs in Davis et al. v. Schnell et al. who with the assistance of Chicago lawyer George N. Leighton sued the Board of Registrars for discrimination based on its practices following the amendment's enactment statewide. A three-judge panel in federal district court declared the Boswell Amendment unconstitutional, for violating the Fifteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed.

In 1949, segregationists in the Alabama Legislature attempted to pass another version of the Boswell Amendment on the last day of the session. Langan and three other senators led a 23-hour filibuster to defeat the new bill. However, the following year, Langan lost his Senate seat to Thomas Johnston, a Dixiecrat supporter with strong financial backing from Old Guard segregationists determined to oust Langan.

After his electoral defeat, Langan accepted another commission from the U.S. Army. Assigned to Korea during the Korean War, he was released from further military service on October 22, 1952.

Mobile City Commissioner

In 1953, Langan returned to Mobile and politics, running for city office on a platform of economic development and municipal improvements. He defeated 20-year incumbent Charles Baumhauer for the position of Finance Commissioner, one of the three seats on the Mobile City Commission. Fellow progressives Henry Luschager and Charles Hackmeyer, also endorsed by Citizens Committee for Good Government, won the other two seats. The three commissioners were each elected at large to four-year terms to supervise specific city departments; they also took turns serving one-year terms as mayor during their tenure. Numerous African Americans who remembered his efforts to defeat the Boswell Amendment supported Langan, as did many white liberals. During his first term, Langan sought to create a biracial coalition of citizens to discuss Mobile's racial problems.

In the 1957 election, Langan faced E. C. Barnard, leader of the local Ku Klux Klan. In this campaign season, the Non-Partisan Voters League (NPVL) introduced the use of "pink sheets", informational leaflets endorsing certain candidates. The NPVL was led by John LeFlore. The League's endorsement, combined with Langan's wide appeal among white voters, swept him to an easy victory over Barnard.

Throughout the early 1960s, as civil rights demonstrations erupted in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma, Mobile remained comparatively quiet. Langan continued to work with activists such as John LeFlore and Spring Hill College professor Father Albert Foley. At a time when the state law required racial segregation in public facilities, Langan achieved moderate concessions in the city, including the desegregation of downtown lunch counters, the public library, and the city-owned golf course.

During this period, Langan as a commissioner fostered economic growth in Mobile. He also oversaw several large expansions of the city territory through annexation of suburban areas. This dramatically increased the size of Mobile and added to its tax base.

In 1964 and 1965 national civil rights legislation passed which ended de jure segregation and the Kennedy and Johnson administrations began enforcing constitutional voting rights through federal oversight and enforcement. African Americans were able to register and vote in Alabama in the ensuing years, as discriminatory barriers to voter registration were forced down.

Although his fellow commissioners faced significant challenges, Langan had been easily reelected in 1961. In 1965 he faced his first real opposition, from local businessman Joseph Bailey. Bailey's ties in the white community threatened to undermine Lagan's white support. During that election, Langan won by fewer than 1,500 votes, in part through support within the black community despite the white backlash some promoted.

African Americans became more politically active after the Voting Rights Act was enforced. But after 1966, Mobile's political climate changed dramatically when the Neighborhood Organized Workers (NOW) was founded. This civil and economic rights organization was run by a group of younger African-American activists, who had grown tired of the moderate politics of black leaders such as John LeFlore. NOW criticized Langan and the other Mobile commissioners for their slow response to problems in the black community. Its leaders pushed to have more blacks elected to and hired in government. They believed that the relationship between Langan and LeFlore was an outdated form of paternalism. When in 1966 Langan appointed LeFlore as the first black member of the Mobile Housing Board, the NOW activists felt confirmed in their views.

As the 1969 election neared, members of NOW organized a "no vote" campaign to protest the slow rate of social and economic progress for blacks. LeFlore attempted to fend off the boycott. Langan was challenged again by Joseph Bailey, who ran a series of ads with photos of Langan with John LeFlore to suggest that the incumbent commissioner was 'too friendly' with the civil rights leader. Combined with NOW's boycott in the black wards, the campaign to unseat Langan succeded; Bailey won by more than 1,000 votes. Langan used the remainder of his time on the commission to appoint several black residents to city positions. He would never again hold public office.

Later years

After his defeat, Langan returned to his law practice. During the late 1970s, he testified for the plaintiffs in Bolden v. City of Mobile, the landmark case filed in 1975 by the Non-Partisan Voters' League that challenged Mobile's at-large election system for City Commission as inherently discriminatory. Blacks comprised 36% of the city's population but, because candidates for each commission seat had to gain a majority of voters, the minority was prevented from ever electing a candidate of its choice.

After a decade-long legal battle, the form of government was changed to a mayor-council system, in which the mayor is elected at-large and city council members are elected from single-member districts. The number of districts were seven, each with roughly equal populations.

In a referendum in May 1985, Mobile voters chose a mayor-council form of government. Elections were held in July 1985, and Langan ran for the seat of the newly created District Two. It had a 70-percent African-American majority. He was defeated by Charles Tunstall, a local minister who was one of three African Americans elected that year to the city council, the first ever in city government. The seven new city council members took office in October 1985.

Langan remained active in civic affairs in Mobile for the rest of his life, particularly in the local Exchange Club and various Catholic charities.

Death and legacy

In February 2003, Langan suffered a stroke and never fully recovered. He died on November 2, 2004, at the age of 92. He is entombed in the Holy Sepulcher Mausoleum in Mobile's Catholic Cemetery.

Mobile named its largest municipal park in his honor.

In August 2009, the city of Mobile dedicated Unity Point Park, a small public space located at the historic boundary between the white and black sections of town. The park features a large bronze statue of Joseph Langan and John LeFlore standing together, to honor their efforts in securing equality for all Mobilians.

Further reading

• Foster, Vera Chandler. "‘Boswellianism:' A Technique in the Restriction of Negro Voting." Phylon Vol. 10, No. 1 (1st Quarter 1949): 26-37.
• Frederickson, Kari. The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
• Kirkland, Scotty E. “Mobile and the Boswell Amendment.” Alabama Review 65 (July 2012): 205-49.

External links

• World Statesmen list of Mayors of Mobile