Thursday, September 18, 2008

Anna Langford dies

She was the first black woman to sit on Chicago's city council and after a battle with lung cancer she died at the age of 90. Here's a story from the Tribune:
She was elected to the City Council in 1971 as alderman of the 16th Ward, which encompasses such South Side neighborhoods as Englewood and Gage Park. During that same election, Langford and former Tribune reporter Marilou McCarthy Hedlund were the first two women elected to the council.

Langford's son, Larry Langford, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department, said early Thursday that his mother lived an active lifestyle up until her diagnosis, about three or four months ago.

"She was still driving her car at age 90," her son said in a telephone interview. "She enjoyed shopping, going to casinos, living life very large. She was enjoying her retirement."

Although she lost her bid for reelection in 1975, Langford returned to the council in 1983, the same year Harold Washington was elected as Chicago's first black mayor. She served two terms during her second stint as an alderman before retiring from the council in 1991.

After receiving her law degree from John Marshall Law School in 1956, she practiced criminal and civil rights law throughout Illinois and defended civil rights workers in the 1960s. She also joined marches led by Martin Luther King Jr. when the Nobel Prize-winning civil rights leader came to Chicago.
I believe she was on WTTW's Chicago Stories in the last couple of years. I forget what the subject was about but the story she told was that some real estate agents were calling her house. They were assuming she was a white person and they were trying to scare her into selling because the blacks were moving in. She told that person that she was one of those blacks who bought a place in that neighborhood. They left her alone after that apparently.

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