Mary Langston was Langston Hughes's grandmother, one of the most significant single influences on the poet's life. She was born in 1837 in Fayetteville, N. C., where her father, James Patterson, was a stone mason.

"Like her parents, Mary Patterson was also a free Negro. Langston Hughes explained:

"On my maternal grandmother's side [of the family], there was French and Indian blood. My grandmother looked like an Indian—with very long black hair. She said she could lay claim to Indian land, but that she never wanted the government (or anybody else) to give her anything. She said there had been a French trader who came down the St. Lawrence, then on foot to the Carolinas, and mated with her grandmother, who was a Cherokee so all her people were free. During slavery, she [Mary] had free papers in North Carolina, and traveled about free, at will."