 Continuing years of trying to gain support for this goal, Langston gained support by Republican Governor Samuel J. Crawford for a referendum in 1867 on the question of black suffrage.He always stressed that he sought legal justice as a human being, not a black human being.The referendum bill passed by the legislature, however, asked voters to decide not only on black suffrage, but on women suffrage, and a third question of disenfranchising persons who had supported the Confederacy during the war.