Some stories are meant to be told. This is one of them.
Late one Friday, author Nancy Vogl was doing research on Idlewild, Michigan, for a screenplay she was writing. About 10 minutes before the library closed, she stumbled upon a remarkable discovery.
“I opened a drawer in a file cabinet, and a file folder was sticking up that appeared to be misfiled,” Vogl said. “I picked it up and out fell a single, yellowed newspaper clipping from the Kalamazoo Gazette. I scanned the article and was instantly intrigued.”
The article detailed the election of Percy J. Langster, the first Black person voted into office as a prosecuting attorney in the United States.
Over the next several days, Vogl continued her research only to find there was little information about Langster. It seemed his achievements — an important piece of the state and nation’s legal, political, and cultural history — had been largely overlooked.
Determined that his story be told, she nominated Langster for recognition by the State Bar of Michigan.
Percy J. Langster is the 44th Michigan Legal Milestone and this is his story.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Percy Langster was born in December 1889 in Brownsville, Pennsylvania,1 and in 1896 moved with his parents to Oil City,2 city of less than 5 square miles located at the mouth of Oil Creek along the Allegheny River at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. Oil wells were first drilled in the area less than 30 years before Langster’s birth, and the emerging petroleum industry fueled massive population growth. The number of Oil City residents more than tripled between 1870 and 18803 and increased another 50% from 1880 to 1890.4 It once simultaneously housed the headquarters of Pennzoil, Quaker State, and Wolf’s Head oil companies.5
According to Vogl, Langster faced significant hurdles growing up. He was the only Black child in Rouseville Borough.6 At 8 years old, Langster left primary school to become a shoeshine boy at the barbershop in the Arlington Hotel to help support his family.7
Young Percy was smart, “and I suspect he was as scrappy as all get-out,” Vogl said.
Along the way, he fell in love with the idea of one day becoming a lawyer.
“As he would shine shoes, he would listen to the legal banter among the local attorneys, which surely inspired him to be a lawyer, his life-long dream,” Vogl said.
Two customers took a particular interest in him: Judge George S. Criswell and attorney William J. Breene, both of whom had children about Langster’s age. They encouraged him to go to high school and helped Langster, a standout football player at Oil City High School, get an athletic scholarship to Cornell University.8
Unfortunately, during his freshman year at Cornell, Langster ran out of funds and had to leave school.9 For the next 16 years, he did whatever he could to earn a living and slowly saved money so he could someday continue his education. He worked various jobs including a stint as a Pullman porter, where he met his wife, Marie Williams, a passenger on the train and the woman who would remain by his side for the rest of his life.10
BECOMING A LAWYER
In 1924, Langster, now 35, finally saved enough money to return to college. He attended Duquesne University and worked as a waiter while going to school. Langster earned his bachelor’s degree from Duquesne in 1928 and earned his law degree in 1932, becoming the first Black student to graduate with two degrees from the university.11 Unfortunately, even with his stellar education, Langster fell victim to the Great Depression. He graduated with his law degree when one of every four workers was unemployed, banks were failing, and hunger marches were common throughout the nation.12
“He lost his modest house in a foreclosure, and he and Marie were forced to rent a home while still caring for his mother,” Vogl said. “Percy tried to find work as a lawyer, but no one would or could hire him, and he didn’t have the funds to open his own practice.”
Meanwhile, one of his law professors at Duquesne, Eugene Strassburger, suggested he work as a butler — and Marie as a maid — for an old college roommate and attorney in Chicago until the couple could get on their feet again.
“Just imagine ... he has a law degree and he’s been reduced to waiting on wealthy people again,” Vogl said.
The downturn didn’t last long.
Within a few months, Langster and his wife settled in Woodland Park, Michigan,13 and he was admitted to the State Bar of Michigan in 1933.14 He opened his first law practice in nearby Bitely and served both Black and white clients.15
Though Langster had a distinctive deep voice, his soft-spoken nature and sense of humor helped pave his pathway to success.16
BLACK EDEN
Woodland Park is a small community nestled in northwestern Newaygo County, just off M-37. It is located 60 miles north of Grand Rapids and, more importantly for the purpose of this narrative, 15 miles south of Idlewild.17
We don’t know exactly how Langster ended up here, but we do know that Woodland Park and its more famous sister community, Idlewild, were resort communities designed and developed to serve prominent Blacks from Chicago, Detroit, and other areas nationwide — people who, because of segregation and Jim Crow laws, were excluded from other vacation destinations and property ownership.
These places grew into meccas of Black entertainment, entrepreneurship, and opportunity. Langster’s story is inherently intertwined with both communities.
Langster operated his law practice until 1938, when he became the first Black educational advisor for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Depression-era federal works program that employed men to make improvements in public lands, forests, and parks.18
During this time, seasonal and year-round residents enjoyed swimming and sailing on Woodland Lake and formal dining at the nearby Royal Breeze Hotel, which also featured a wrap-around, screened porch.19 Idlewild was also flourishing; among the community’s property owners were Violette Neatley Anderson — the first Black woman to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court20 — and educator, scholar, and activist W.E.B. DuBois.21
Langster, who had avoided serving in the military during World War I because he was caring for his mother,22 put his practice and his life in this Black Eden on hold in 1942 to contribute to the war effort.23 At the age of 53, he left the CCC to become a civilian technical advisor for the Air Corps Technical Training Command at Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois, during World War II.24
“He was recommended to military staff at Rantoul by the higher-ups at the CCC despite the fact that he had no technical experience,” Vogl said.
Langster arrived at Chanute just a few months after the Tuskegee Airmen completed their training there and transferred to Alabama.25 More than 200,000 soldiers were trained in aircraft maintenance, weather observation, life support, and metal processing at Chanute during the war.26
After the war, Langster returned to Michigan and in 1947 moved a bit further up M-37, taking up residence in Baldwin, located in Lake County about four miles from Idlewild.27
HISTORIC ELECTION
Idlewild was coming into its heyday as the “Summer Apollo of Michigan,” hosting entertainers including The Four Tops, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, and Della Reese.28 According to a Detroit News article from the time:
This sparsely settled county of slightly more than 6,000 population has the largest negro summer resort colony in America. Property owners and guests in the 36 square mile area known as Idlewild come from every state in the Union, and also from Labrador and Hawaii.
Idlewild was established … as a place where negroes could enjoy themselves without racial restrictions and prejudice. It contains hotels, resorts and 1,000 homes of which 350 are permanent, schools, churches, riding trails and all the other outdoor facilities for recreation.29 Langster, then 58, threw his hat in the ring to serve as Lake County prosecutor, challenging three-term incumbent Dic I. Cooper in a county that, even with Idlewild’s year-round residents, was predominantly white.
It was 1948. Ronald Reagan was acting in movies,30 the term “big bang theory” hadn’t yet been coined,31 the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was still a generation away, and Langster and Cooper were the only two attorneys in Lake County.32
Langster faced an unexpected obstacle in his quest; he was disqualified from the primary election because of a procedural oversight — but that might have provided just the boost his candidacy needed. Almost all the candidates for county offices were disqualified because they failed to file affidavits of identity, then a new requirement for office seekers. Only two candidates successfully filed all the paperwork to run for office; one was Cooper, who filed for both re-election as county prosecutor and a run for state representative.33
“The filing of affidavits of identity was a new mandate by the state that had changed a couple of years prior,” Vogl explained. “Previously, the state required this of the bigger communities like Detroit, Lansing, and Grand Rapids, but changed it to include all elections throughout the state.”
The disqualified candidates accused Cooper of failing to properly notify them of the new requirement, and Langster gained an important ally in incumbent Sheriff Edward Engel, who also was barred from the primary ballot.34
As a result, Langster was forced to run as a sticker candidate — literally, he asked voters to place a sticker bearing his name on the ballot over the name of his opponent — and he switched parties to directly challenge Cooper on the Republican ballot.35
Although Lake County certainly had an unusually high concentration of Black residents, white voters outnumbered Black voters 3 to 1. While there was little evidence of “racial animosity” in the campaign,36 Langster’s campaign literature directly addressed his race.
“I stand as a symbol of tolerance in a community which Negroes and whites are sharing peacefully and profitably. As prosecutor, I will deal impartially with all races and creeds. Were I to favor my own people, they would be the first to condemn me.
“The eyes of the nation are on me in this test.”37
Langster won the primary with 677 votes to Cooper’s 568. Cooper also lost his bid for state representative in the primary, so he decided to run again for prosecutor in the general election. This time, Cooper was the sticker candidate, and Langster won again, 1,138 to 986 votes.38
On Jan. 1, 1949, just a few days after his 59th birthday, Percy J. Langster was sworn in as Lake County prosecutor.
Langster admitted even he was surprised by his victory:
“My election could only happen in America, of course, but even here it could not have happened several years ago. Better inter-racial feeling is slowly developing in this nation.
“I campaigned for justice to all and bias towards no man. And somehow, I think, the people grasped hold of that idea.”39
A LASTING LEGACY
With his historic election, Langster quietly blazed a trail for other Black attorneys, judges, and politicians across America.
“A lifetime of pursuing his dreams of a career in law came to fruition in a remarkable, groundbreaking way,” Vogl said. “Percy paved the way for the Eric Holders and Kamala Harrises and any other person of color vying for their right to serve their communities and country.”
And he did so with class and dignity.
“Percy always found a way to find common ground with people — as a youth and as an adult — regardless of the color of one’s skin. He was a shining example of decency, integrity, and honor,” Vogl said.
Langster ran for re-election in 1950 but lost to Cooper in the primary by 55 votes. Rather than calling for a recount, the Sept. 15, 1950, edition of the Lake County Star reported that Langster “accepted defeat with his usual courtesy and grace.”40
Following his defeat, Langster returned to private practice in Baldwin for four years. He died at age 64 on Nov. 28, 1954, at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Rapids while awaiting surgery to remove a cyst on his right lung.41
State Bar of Michigan President James W. Heath said Langster’s impact continues to resonate.
“I am so proud that Percy Langster will forever be memorialized through this Michigan Legal Milestone recognition,” said James W. Heath, president of the State Bar of Michigan. “His courage and perseverance allowed him to challenge both direct and institutional racism. As the elected prosecutor for Lake County, he committed himself to delivering equal justice within a system which overtly marginalized Black citizens. All of us who have in some way taken on the task of making our society more fair and more just owe Percy Langster a tremendous debt of gratitude.”
On August 25, 2023, the State Bar of Michigan will unveil a bronze plaque honoring the life and legacy of Percy J. Langster as the 44th Michigan Legal Milestone at Yates Township Hall in Lake County. The plaque will be permanently placed at the Lake County Courthouse in Baldwin.42
“Two years ago, nobody knew Percy was the first Black prosecutor in America,” Vogl said. “That’s about to change.”