Anna Malaika Tubbs Calls To Humanize Black Motherhood And Honors Matriarchs Behind Civil Rights Movement

essence.com:

Anna Malaika Tubbs looked up to her mother, a lawyer who advocated for women’s rights both in the U.S. and abroad. She was instructed to always pay attention to the way women, especially mothers, were treated in the various places they lived throughout her adolescence.

In trying to follow her mother’s footsteps, Tubbs has always been a staunch advocate for women and mothers. Indeed, one of Tubbs’ goals is to bring Black women’s stories, that she feels should have already been known, into the limelight so that others can become educated on these previous “hidden figures”.

With this ethos in the back of her mind as a personal mantra, Tubbs has been constantly thinking about the power of motherhood, so much so that she authored her first book about three mothers born within five years of each other—who gave birth to their famous sons within a six-year time frame: The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation, which became a runaway New York Times Best Seller.

The book delves into the complex stories of Alberta Williams King, Louise Little, and Emma Berdis Jones, as well as offers up a differing focal point of the civil rights movement from an oft-overlooked female perspective.Just in time for the Mother’s Day holiday, Anna Tubbs sat down with ESSENCE to discuss her book and the importance of celebrating Black mothers.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.ESSENCE: Malcolm X said that “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman.” Why do you think the role of Black mothers are so often overlooked?In America, there’s so many things that play a role in terms of the patriarchy, and the intersection of racism and sexism, especially Black.