His grandmother was a well-educated traditional woman and was a bleeding heart advocate for racial justice. She planted the seeds of racial pride in Hughes with her stories of Hughes’ grandfather, great uncle, and even her first husband. Mary’s first husband had been involved in the 1859 attack on Harpers Ferry as a part of John Brown’s band, and the fight to end slavery in the south with a slave rebellion. Hughes maternal grandfather was a militant abolitionist and a claimed “conductor” for the Underground Railroad. His Great Uncle John Mercer Langston was a well-known black American in the nineteenth century who was a major abolitionist and activist for the black community. Hughes grandmother wanted to make sure he had a long lasting sense
