1st black female alderman dies

Anna R. Langford, 90, the first black woman to serve on the Chicago City Council, died Wednesday at her home after a brief battle with lung cancer, according to her son, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford.

Born in Springfield, Ohio, Anna Langford moved to Chicago after the deaths of her parents. A graduate of the Chicago Public Schools and Roosevelt University, she became a lawyer in 1956 after attending John Marshall Law School.

Before being elected alderman, Langford was a civil rights activist, allowing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to use her home to plan for a march on Cicero to promote integration.

It was her mother's death that propelled her into civil rights activism. Langford's mother, a white woman, went to an Ohio hospital suffering from appendicitis. But when her biracial children showed up, hospital staff ordered her transferred to a hospital serving blacks. En route, her appendix burst, and she died.

Langford won her first aldermanic election to represent the 16th Ward in 1971.

She lost her 1975 re-election bid, lost again in 1979, then saw victory in two following elections in the 1980s.

Langford was one of several black politicians who urged then U.S. Rep. Harold Washington to run for Chicago mayor. Washington was elected in 1983 and died of a heart attack in 1987, at the beginning of his second term.

Besides her son, Langford's survivors include three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.