Charles Langston's brother recruited 1000s of Black soldiers for the Civil War. He later served as the founding dean of Howard Law School, the first president of Virginia State University, the 4th Black elected official in America & one of the first Black Virginians to serve in Congress.

No one really knows what happned to James Bradley, the man who helped radicalized Oberlin. The Lane Seminary president who lost that debate and the school never got over it. But the Lane debate inspired his daughter to write a series that became a relatively successful book: "Uncle Tom's Cabin

Lewis Leary was killed during John Brown's raid Mary and Charles Langston eventually got married. They named their oldest son Nat Turner Langston & their daughter Caroline They moved to Kansas, educated escaped slaves at a contrabandcamp & eventually opened the first HBCU west of the Mississippi

Charles Langston died in 1892. Caroline got married to a guy who was pretty radical and became a school teacher. WHen she got divorced, she sent her son James to live with his grandmother Mary. And he LOVED hearing all these stories about his grandparents' bad-ass crew.

When Mary's grandson went to Columbia, he wanted to find a crew like his grandma's. But his white classmates weren't as friendly so he dropped out and began writing and working odd jobs. In 1925, he got a job as a personal assistant for a really demanding magazine editor, so James quit his job.

It was probably for the best. James & his boss both had some crazy ideas Mary's grandson told his parents he was studying engineering, but James was actually trying to make a living writing poems using his middle name

James' boss had an even crazier idea He thought the ENTIRE COUNTRY should dedicate an entire week to learning stories like Oberlin Rescue & James Bradley's speech. Carter G. Woodson started Black History Month just after losing his personal assistant, Mary & Charles's grandson... Langston Hughes

Anyway... there might be a reason why one speech reverberated through history. Now, I'm not making this claim myself, and it's difficult to verify. So I'll just quote the man directly: "This is the first instance in the history of the United States that a Black man addressed a white audience."