Joseph Nicholas Langan (March 11, 1912 – November 2, 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.Keith Nicholls, "Politics and Civil Rights in Post-World War II Mobile" in Thomason, Michael, Mobile: the New History of Alabama's first city (Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press 2001) pp. 247, 251 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.Thomas P. Harrison, "So Long Joe" Press-Register (Mobile, Alabama) Dec. 14, 2003 p. 1
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 Murphy High School, graduating in 1931. That same year, he joined the Alabama National Guard, while clerking as an apprentice to his uncle, Vincent B. McAleer. At night, he studied for the Alabama bar exam, which he passed in 1936; he would ultimately become the last attorney in Mobile to be admitted without going to law school. His further education came through the National Guard and U.S. Army, and finally, Spring Hill College after most of his military service. He graduated in 1951, although he also taught government at the school the previous two terms, and would later serve on its board of trustees.see talk page
Personal life Langan married Maude Adele Holcombe in 1943; the couple had no children.
Career Following his admission to the bar, Langan continued to work for his uncle, and also became the city attorney for Chickasaw, helping incorporate the city.Erickson p. 108
Early military service
Langan had enlisted in the Alabama National Guard in 1931, 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 U.S. 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.U.S. National Guard Register 1951 p. 602 of 1184 on ancestry.com
Alabama legislator
In 1939, Langan ran successfully for a seat in the Alabama House of Representatives. The 27-year-old politician worked to improve Alabama's voting laws (overseeing the installation of voting machines in Mobile) and adoption of a merit system for promoting public employees. His military obligations cut short his term in 1941 as America entered 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 (population having more than doubled since 1920, including many from other parts of Alabama and Mississippi). 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 Materiel 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 in 1943 and 1944, particularly since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration required defense contractors to hire and promote workers without racial discrimination. Moreover, in 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued Smith v. Allwright, a Texas case but which also effectively outlawed the whites-only primary customary in Alabama. Nonetheless, that year, twelve qualified and registered black Mobilians were turned away as they attempted to vote, as photographers for national magazines documented.Nicholls, p. 249
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 as a whole. Langan used his position to improve the lives of both white and black Mobilians. For example, although consideration of recent federal judicial decisions in Texas voting rights cases 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 before the primary, but the state Democratic Executive Committee and registration officials only allowed a specified number of blacks to register on a given day.Nicholls, pp. 249-250 Langan also became an early supporter for equalizing the salaries of white and black public schoolteachers, who taught in a segregated system, and shocked some by proposing that part of a beer tax increase the Mobile School Board sought be used to rectify pay and workload disparities.Nicholls, p. 254
Langan supported the candidacy of James E. Folsom for governor and became one of Folsom's leading allies in the state senate. Langan also 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 U.S. 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 enable registration for African Americans, Langan urged Folsom to appoint Lt. Col. E.J. "Gunny" Gonzales (an Air Force Judge Advocate General officer who had been an athletic star and graduate of McGill Institute High School) 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). Gonzales would later relate his experience on the Board of Registrars for the ten African American plaintiffs in Davis et al. v. Schnell et al.81 F.Supp. 872 (S.D.Ala. Jan. 7, 1949) who with the assistance of Chicago lawyer George N. Leighton sued the Board 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 U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed in 1949.Schnell v. Davis, 336 U.S. 933 (1949)
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 fellow lawyer Thomas Johnston, a Dixiecrat 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.U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS death file available on ancestry.com
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 A. Baumhauer for the position of Finance Commissioner, one of the three seats on the Mobile City Commission. Fellow progressives Henry R. Luscher and Charles F. Hackmeyer, also endorsed by the Citizens Committee for Good Government, won the other two seats.Nicholls, pp. 255-256 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 Langan's efforts to defeat the Boswell Amendment supported him, as did many white liberals. During his first term, Langan sought to create a biracial coalition of citizens to discuss Mobile's racial problems. Since the Mobile Press Register and his fellow commissioners publicly opposed it, Langan first called a town meeting, and when it had a positive response, the committee of 17 whites and 13 blacks was created. It actually became a conservative force, later criticized by a new generation of civil rights leaders as promoting a "kinder, gentler" segregation.Nichols p. 262