John Langston was an attorney, diplomat, politician, educator, and activist. He was the first dean of Howard Law School. On April 17, 1877, he gave a lecture in Jersey City, NJ, to a crowd of African Americans and others interested in peaceful resistance to white supremacy titled “The Other Phase of Reconstruction.” Actions such as those proposed by Langston were precursors to the non-violent civil disobedience of the civil rights era in the mid-twentieth century.