“We are working to make this world worthy of us.” Thus began Anna Malaika Tubbs, Ph.D., author of “The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation” (2021). Dr. Tubbs spoke at an author talk on Jan. 29 hosted by the Black Cultural Center for MLK Week. The talk was moderated by Elleanor Jean Hendley, an Emmy award-winning journalist and author, and organized by Assistant Dean and BCC Director Karima Bouchenafa.
Planning for this event spanned months, as Dean Bouchenafa explained in an interview with The Phoenix. Bouchenafa and Hendley are both Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority sisters and members of The Links, a historically African American women’s social and service organization founded in Philadelphia in 1946.
Among the organization’s many focuses are its arts and literacy programming. A member of Bouchenafa’s chapter (Delaware Valley, PA) who leads the arts initiative learned about Tubbs’s book last summer and invited her to participate in an event called “Linked in Literature,” where Hendley served as interviewer. From there, Bouchenafa began considering inviting her to Swarthmore for MLK Week. Hendley even rearranged her personal schedule to interview Tubbs a second time and continue their discussion from the previous summer.
Born into a mixed-race family with a Black Ghanaian father and a white mother, Tubbs had lived abroad as a child and was exposed to the various ways of living that other cultures pursued. The aforementioned quote came in the context of an anecdote that Tubbs’s mother told her, since her mother didn’t know how her daughter’s experience of growing up as a Black girl and a Black woman would impact her. Yet Tubbs said that her mother was an ally and did everything she could to help her face and overcome any of the adversities she might encounter in life.
At the beginning of the event, Tubbs asked the attendees to go around the room, introduce ourselves, and explain how we all came to gather at this event. Bouchenafa later said that people who enter rooms are meant to be there, and it was clear that everyone in the audience was meant to be there that evening. Among the audience members were an archivist and preservationist of materials related to Black and African American history in Chester, PA, as well as students and other community members. Whatever had brought us all together that evening was certainly meant to be.
Tubbs and Hendley were discussing the importance of three civil rights figures — Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin — and why their mothers — Alberta Christine Williams, Louise Little, Emma Berdis Jones, respectively — had been left out of the scholarly discourses. These three women and mothers were all born roughly six years apart and would have three sons who would be crucial to the Civil Rights Movement. In the epigraph to her book, Tubbs wrote, “This [book] is for all the mamas. You deserve respect, dignity, and recognition. I honor you. I celebrate you. I see you.” I was personally drawn to this talk precisely because I had personally failed to consider the mothers of these Civil Rights activists whom I’ve admired for so long. This was, in part, a result of a historical blindness that society ascribes to Black women and mothers. The publication of this book seeks to correct that which it does with the delicacy and urgency that is required.
In my family, I grew up within a matriarchy. My father wasn’t in my life after I was twelve years old, and so my sister and I were two biracial children raised by a single mother (my mother is Jewish and my father is Black). The prejudice against interracial couples our family faced provided another layer of complexity since both my sister and I visibly present as white, leading to a series of psychological conflicts with racial identity, ancestral heritage, and the privilege provided by having a light skin tone. My maternal grandmother was a very important person in my life, and still is, and I appreciated how “The Three Mothers” successfully brings these three matriarchs into a discourse with one another and explores the varied effects of racialization upon them. It is a fascinating and incredibly necessary work of scholarly and historical research whose findings signify a paradigm shift for a myriad of academic disciplines.
Tubbs shared that she was inspired to pursue this project as a Ph.D candidate after she had read “Hidden Figures” by Margot Lee Shetterly and “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson. A challenge that Tubbs faced was the fact that the subjects of her story were all deceased. She explained the ways she overcame these difficulties by doing an incredible amount of research and by approaching other historians of MLK, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin to source any information that they might have on their mothers. She built a timeline for the birthdates and death dates of their parents, which were surprisingly difficult to find. In fact, James Baldwin’s mother was not listed in census data: she had been raised by her sister, since Baldwin’s grandmother died shortly after his mother’s birth. Tubbs discovered in her timeline of the three women’s lives that not only were they all born within six years of each other, but their sons were also born within five years of each other. This is truly an intergenerational study of the fascinating family dynamics between mothers and sons. The sons’ activism was deeply inspired by the ideals their mothers imbued within them throughout childhood.
She discussed the challenges of getting in contact with King’s descendants, although she was referred to the family archivists and kept in contact with them for her research. Tubbs’s discoveries would become the basis of her book. This project was completed in three years, which is quite a remarkable feat for the scale and the depth that Tubbs brings into her work. Not only was she a Ph.D student when she had sold the book to her publisher, Flat Iron Books (giving her an even harder deadline than her original Ph.D program), but on top of this, she became pregnant with her first son while completing her research. Tubbs framed her research question quite simply and straightforwardly: “Who were these mothers?” Her intention for this research was to focus on these women in their own terms and not solely based on their familial proximity to their sons or their husbands. She wanted to learn about their journeys to become the people that they were and the mothers that they became. Additionally, she wanted to understand how that transitional process might have warranted certain sacrifices that these women had to make in their lives.
One of Tubbs’s findings in her book struck a deep chord with Bouchenafa, “The information she shared about Malcolm X’s mother really struck me because I do recall hearing something of the sort (in the past) that she had been painted as mentally unstable, but I never learned why. The case may not really have been that she was mentally unstable (not that there’s any stigma in that health matter) but that because of the times in which she was living, the idea that this Black woman standing up for herself and insisting that something was a particular way was then characterized as her being unstable. That was profound for me. It was very painful.”
Tubbs’s research suggests that former interpretations of Malcolm X’s mother’s “madness” require a new perspective on her admission to a psychiatric hospital that might shed light on her mental health as she grieved the loss of her husband. Tubbs found a note written by a white, male doctor who, referring to Louise Little’s claims of being discriminated against, declared that “the patient is suffering from a paranoid condition, probably dementia praecox” and recommended her nonconsensual admission into a psychiatric medical institution where she would reside for the next 25 years of her life.
This anecdote also resonated with me deeply since my paternal grandmother worked as a nurse and perhaps experienced similar brutal racist and misogynistic abuse. I can only imagine what my grandmother witnessed and experienced as a Black woman working in medical institutions that made her disillusioned with the healthcare system to the point that she decided to forfeit treatment for advanced-stage breast cancer. She passed away shortly after I was born, and when my family told me of this story, my sense was that my grandmother would rather die in pain but with her dignity intact. It is a somewhat revolutionary act that she took, but incredibly tragic. It’s remarkable that Tubbs’s work highlights the medical racism that impacts many families across the country, in particular towards Malcolm X’s family.
By the end of the talk, which had been so emotional and deeply impactful, one woman in the audience shared a personal anecdote relating to an earlier discussion about these women’s relationships to their sons (whom they outlived). She said that the day of this event was the anniversary of the loss of her own son. It was at this point that I shed quite a few tears, because the loss that these women have experienced is truly unspeakable. However, it is important to acknowledge this, and I felt that this woman, who felt comfortable enough to share the story in a room of strangers, illustrates the impact that such a book and such research can have on people.
Tubbs had hoped that her book would not be the only one to discuss the mothers of prominent Civil Rights figures. She shared that she would like to invite other people, scholars, historians, and activists to join this scholarly conversation to shed light on the impact of mothers in our society on shaping significant social movements and, to be even more impactful, have mothers share their own experiences themselves. Tubbs’ book inspired this woman to write about her story and document her experiences for posterity, exemplifying how talks like hers can have a material impact on the broader community.
When asked about the difficulties and the frictions of Tubbs’ experience with writing and selling the novel, she recommended wholeheartedly that, as a Black woman author, it is pertinent and necessary that one advocate for themselves. Her publishers didn’t expect the book to become as popular as it did, and they ended up understocking the initial publication runs. When it came time to publish her book in paperback, she met with the executives at her publishing house to ensure that enough copies would be printed to account for the demand she knew was there for her book. Although her publishers resisted, she remained steadfast. It turns out that once it came out, her book remained on the New York Times’ best-seller list for weeks. Tubbs has also written a book titled “Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us,” and she has a contract for two other books that are forthcoming.
Tubbs concluded the talk by drawing a through-line between the subjects of her book and her own life as a new mother. She described a shared ethics of motherhood which she called “the Tenets of Black Mothering,” which I will try to faithfully reproduce here. The first tenet that mothers tell their sons is that there is ugliness in this world. The second tenet is that they tell their children to see themselves beyond that ugliness. The third tenet is to teach their sons and children resistance, and that there is resistance in joy. The final tenet is to love and to live and to find that joy in your own life. These are among the important lessons to share and to adhere to as best as we can in our lives. I’m sure that this text will be critical for future generations, and I feel hope and positivity radiating from people like Tubbs, their mothers, and other civil rights activists, who we can turn to in moments that are cruel and ugly. But this is not an excuse for cynicism. It’s an opportunity to find joy and hope and to live and find joy despite it all.
In considering these lessons, I asked Bouchenafa to share a message for students who are facing certain elements — the “Legion of Doom” in her own words — of the present moment that are trying to undo the progress made from the Civil Rights Movement, and how we can remain optimistic and resist these regressive and sensationalized efforts coming from the current administration. She began to share an anecdote about her recent attendance of a court hearing in Philadelphia, where the city is suing the federal government after its desecration of Independence Mall and the corresponding erasure of crucial Black and African American history.
Recalling Bouchenafa’s remark about how those who are in a room are those who are meant to be there, Bouchenafa sought to be in that court to hear and analyze the arguments from both sides. This led her to realize that there are tools in our system that are being deployed to resist what she characterizes as a “blitzkrieg” and the “smash and grab” of the federal government to disorient us from what’s really going on.
“If we were afraid of these attacks on civil rights, let’s look to history. Let’s look at how all of those amazing folks fought. How they strategized, how they were able to ‘come to center’ and really build a strong foundation that helped them fight. If people could fight and win before, I’m hopeful that we can fight and win again. But we really have to be intentional and strategic about it.”
The lessons drawn from this event further illustrate that when people come together in spaces such as these, meaningful change can occur within the hearts and minds of people, ultimately leading to progress. Tubbs held a book signing after the event, and due to a technical error in the payment system, she offered signed copies free of charge. The inscription she wrote within my book has left its mark more permanently in my mind than on the pages of her book. I hope more scholars will engage in similar efforts to remove the blindness and suppression cast upon aspects of our collective history. We must look for the gaps not only in the academic literature, but also within ourselves.
