Three Mothers

How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

Anna Malaika Tubbs

• Publisher: William Collins
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780008405328
• eBook ISBN: 9780008405335
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

An extraordinary account of Berdis Baldwin, Louise Little and Alberta King: the mothers of James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

How did these three black women, all born within a few years of each other at the beginning of the twentieth century, face a dangerous landscape of profound racism, raise three of the most significant voices in the civil rights movement, and do the work of foregrounding that entire drive for the furthering of black voices and rights?

With brilliant new research, historian Anna Malaika Tubbs offers an intimate insight into the lives of these three extraordinary mothers and, through the challenges they faced and overcame, a broader story of black feminism, activism and survival in twentieth century America.

For fans of Hidden Figures, Melissa Harris-Perry’s Sister Citizen, or Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women.

Part I

The Circumstances of Our Birth

I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.

—HARRIET TUBMAN

[Negro women] are the greatest menace possible to the moral life of any community where they live. And they are evidently the chief instruments of the degradation of the men of their own race. When a man’s mother, wife and daughters are all immoral women, there is no room in his fallen nature for the aspirations of honor and virtue … I cannot imagine such a creation as a virtuous black woman.

—AN ANONYMOUS WHITE WOMAN

When multiple forces are working to deny life, to take away rights, to coerce people into submission, hope persists, the fight does not weaken, and life continues to be birthed. Through individual agendas that battle oppression and in the uniting of efforts, Black women have found a way, even when seemingly impossible, to give life. This sentiment sets the scene for the arrival of our three girls: girls who would grow up to become their own givers of life; Black girls who were born in a time of social upheaval, particularly in the United States, and also a time of Black women’s continued battle for their community.

We do not begin in the United States, however. Instead, we launch in a majestic place where a ridge of mountains runs north and south; where the reds, yellows, and greens of the flora and agriculture are surrounded by the blues of the Caribbean Sea. Here, you find a culture that stems from a mix of West Indian, West African, and Caribbean traditions that were forever changed by British and French colonization. Originally inhabited by the Arawaks, who were displaced by the Carib Indians, who were then colonized by the French and later the British, the area is now populated primarily (82 percent) by people of West African ancestry who are descendants of slaves. This island of volcanic origin is filled with rain forests, waterfalls, beaches, rum, nutmeg, calypso, reggae, and soca. We begin on the island of Grenada, where Louise Langdon Norton was born.

In order to understand Louise, in order to know how the color of her skin influenced her thinking, in order to comprehend why her grandparents were so important in her life and, as a result, in Malcolm X’s life, we cannot begin with her birth. Louise would become a warrior and a symbol of resistance because the struggle for freedom pulsed through her genes. The blood of her ancestors carried with it messages of liberation, while the land that held her whispered tales of revolutions it had witnessed over the years. The water all around her held the bodies of fighters who came before her, and she was proud to continue the legacy of her country, her people, and her family.

To this day, one of the defining features of Grenadians is their resistance, specifically to white supremacy. In 1650, more than two hundred years before Louise was born, dozens of French soldiers were sent to the island to capture and colonize the Caribs. Striking at night and beginning a bloody slaughter on May 30, the French sought to take control of Carib land and life. Instead of surrendering, at least forty people chose to jump several hundred feet to their deaths from a hill overlooking the Caribbean Sea. The story of these Caribs is known in Grenada’s history as a symbol of resistance to European domination, and the hill from which they leapt is known as Leapers Hill. Through history like this, Louise would learn of the bravery of Carib people. She would learn that sacrificing one’s life in the name of freedom was more admirable than living in captivity.

A century later, in 1795, Grenada witnessed more radical resistance to colonization, this time in the form of Fedon’s Rebellion. Led by Julien Fedon, a man inspired by the Haitian Revolution, an estimated fourteen thousand enslaved Africans joined forces with freed Africans to revolt against British rule. The rebels burned houses and dragged British settlers into the streets where they would be executed. This rebellion engulfed Grenada for more than a year until sixteen regiments were deployed on the island to regain British rule. The revolt was halted by the British force, but Fedon was never captured. Though his whereabouts were unknown, his revolutionary spirit was there to stay, and the rebellion contributed to Grenada’s eventual independence. From hearing stories like Fedon’s, Louise knew to never simply accept defeat. She found champions of rebellions and revolutions. She knew fighting against injustice called for serious measures.

In the first years of the twentieth century, the population of Grenada was approximately sixty-three thousand. Two of these residents were Louise’s grandparents, “Liberated Africans” by the names of Jupiter and Mary Jane Langdon who brought six children into the world. To be a “Liberated African” meant that of an estimated four million Africans brought as slaves to the Americas, Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean islands, Arabia, and India, you were part of the 6 percent who had been emancipated by a judicial network made up of international courts and local authorities. In the nineteenth century, British and U.S. governments passed laws to diminish and ultimately ban maritime human trafficking. This by no means signaled the end of slavery; instead it furthered the already detestable sexual exploitation of slaves. With fewer slaves being captured overseas, more slaves would need to be produced on land to meet labor demands. However, some did find freedom as a result. With this kind of legislation in place, authorities seized any ships that were suspected of violating maritime rules, and when slaves were found, their fate was decided. A small percentage of these slaves were actually freed.

Jupiter and Mary Jane were captured in Nigeria and then released by the Royal Navy. With them, they brought their own stories of resistance against colonial rule. They shared these with their children and grandchildren. Not only was Louise raised on stories of the Carib Indians and revolutionaries like Fedon, she was also well aware of her West African roots.

One of the most famous stories of resistance to colonial rule in West Africa is that of a queen mother by the name of Yaa Asantewaa, who eventually became the commander in chief of the Ashanti people in Ghana. Yaa Asantewaa fought in the War of the Golden Stool in the late nineteenth century. After the British had successfully dethroned and exiled other Ashanti leaders, Yaa Asantewaa refused to give up. She stated that if the men of the kingdom would not defend their people, the women would rise to the challenge. She reinvigorated her people to fight, and although she was captured during the rebellion, she too has become known in history as a symbol of unwavering resistance to European rule.

After being enslaved and subsequently emancipated, Jupiter and Mary Jane found themselves in the small village of La Digue in Grenada. Despite being “liberated,” they were not spared the pains of colonization and racism. They still lived in a world where their rights were constantly violated and where they tried to teach their children how to resist. As their children grew older, Jupiter and Mary Jane continued to lead the household with strength and love no matter what came their way.

In the late nineteenth century, their daughter Edith gave birth to a child. This child stood out from the rest of her family members. Because of her skin, which was nearly white, and her hair, which was long and straight, it was rumored that she was the product of rape. While the exact details of her conception have been lost in history, this tragic possibility was unfortunately a common one.

The effects of slavery, one being the constant control of Black women’s bodies through sexual violence, was universal far after emancipation; countless Black women and girls were raped while perpetrators faced only minor consequences, if any. This injustice took place in colonies all over the world long before Edith’s time. As Pamela Scully states in her article “Rape, Race, and Colonial Culture,” “Colonialism created conditions that authorized the pervasive rape of black women by white men.” The colonized were seen as less civilized and less worthy of protection. Women of color were viewed as more promiscuous than their white counterparts, and therefore violence against them was justified. Scully begins by telling the story of Anna Simpson, a woman who was raped on April 2, 1850, near Cape Town. Her perpetrator, David Booyson, was originally found guilty and sentenced to death. However, when it was discovered that Anna was a colored woman instead of a “respectable woman,” Booyson’s death sentence was replaced with temporary hard labor.

The lack of appropriate punishment for the perpetrators of sexual violence against women of color also continued to take place long after Edith’s time. One of the most famous examples is that of Recy Taylor in Alabama. On the night of September 3, 1944, Recy, a twenty-four-year-old at the time, was walking home from church when she was abducted and raped by six white men. Even though one of the men admitted guilt, none of the six was indicted.

Countless women have experienced this atrocity, and most of their stories will never be known, but the historian Danielle McGuire used her book At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance to pay tribute to as many women as she could. The book details forty separate cases similar to Anna’s, Recy’s, and possibly Edith’s. One of the dozens of stories she shares is that of Betty Jean Owens, a young Black woman who was raped by four white men in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1959. The terror began when the four men made a pact to “go out and get a nigger girl” and have an “all night party.” Armed with shotguns and switchblades, they searched for victims near a local park. They hijacked a car and ordered two female Florida A&M University students to get out. One of the girls escaped, but the other, Betty Jean Owens, was raped seven times.

In 1897, Edith gave birth to her first and only baby, a girl named Louise. Jupiter and Mary Jane helped to raise her. Her skin was so light, she could easily pass as white, and Louise hated this about herself. From the very beginning, she faced a choice that many mixed-race people faced before her and that she would continue to face for the rest of her life: whether, even in times of danger, to declare her African descent and claim her Blackness—and if so, how to do so. She would find strategies in her family, in her education, in the stories she was raised on.

The Langdon family was dealt a devastating blow when Louise’s grandfather and father figure, a carpenter and farmer who did everything he could to provide for his family, passed away in 1901, leaving Mary Jane to raise six children and a grandchild on her own. The lessons Jupiter passed on to Louise during her first years of life were essential, but even more influential was the radical feminist energy in her household. Louise was empowered by the strength of her mother, grandmother, and aunts as she stepped into her own womanhood. Her humble yet powerful upbringing would equip her to face the many battles that awaited her.

Our next story begins in a city more than two thousand miles away from Grenada. This city, once a southern colony, possessed one of the largest slave populations in the United States. By 1870, its Black population constituted 46 percent of the city’s 21,700 residents. It is home to the Eastern Continental Divide, which separates water between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. This city is known for its diverse music, southern hospitality, rich history of Black educational institutions, and status as the birthplace of the civil rights movement in America. However, this city is also in the state where the second-largest number of lynchings took place between 1877 and 1950. Burned to the ground during the Civil War, it rose like a phoenix from the ashes, symbolizing its resilience against destruction.

We continue our journey in Atlanta, Georgia, where Alberta Christine Williams was born on September 13, 1903. In order to understand the foundation of Alberta’s unwavering faith in the Lord, in order to know why Martin Luther King, Jr., even became a reverend, in order to identify the relationship between the Black church and a movement based in nonviolence, we begin with the family Alberta was born into.

One of the primary places of restoration for Black communities, where they could come together to cope with their heartache and celebrate each other, where they created their own nation within a nation, where they affirmed their humanity and fostered political power, was, and continues to be, the church. In Atlanta sits one of the most famous churches in the world, Ebenezer Baptist. Founded in 1886, Ebenezer Baptist has become a symbol of hope and resistance to oppression.

In 1894, a reverend by the name of Adam Daniel Williams became the head pastor at Ebenezer. He was a visionary who believed the church had a responsibility to fight racial injustice and empower its members through services that could meet all their basic needs. At the time, there were only seventeen members of the church. In 1899 he married Jennie Celeste, who became the president of the Women’s Missionary Society at Ebenezer. Jennie Celeste was well educated and insightful. She matched her husband’s heart and drive, and under their leadership the congregation grew continuously over the years. They promoted Black businesses, they urged their members to own property, and they spoke up for adequate public housing for African Americans, all in the face of Jim Crow.

We know the Jim Crow story well. In 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation. Laws forbade Black people from dining in the same restaurants as their white counterparts without a partition in place. Black people were forced to enter and leave such restaurants from a different entrance; they were not to be seen socializing with a white person in public and could certainly not form romantic relationships with them. Schools were separated. People of color were not even allowed to give testimony or evidence against a white person. People of color were forced to live in the most underserved parts of their respective cities. In short, such laws forcefully limited where Black people could eat, where they could sit, where they could live, where they could use the restroom. Not a single part of a Black person’s life was left untouched by the false claims of “separate but equal.”

We know that if these dictates were ever defied, or if it was simply said that they were, the rule breaker would face the ultimate price. Between 1890 and 1917, two to three Black southerners were murdered each week. This era marked the highest number of lynchings and rapes of Black people across the United States as well as the beginning of mass incarceration of Black people through its various forms. Constantly looking for ways to keep Black people in slavery, white supremacists enforced a world where Black people could be locked away in prison, forced to work without pay to settle arbitrary debts, or put to death without any justification.

This can be seen through the horrific story of Mary Turner, born in 1899, whose life was cut short in 1918. While she is not one of the three women at the center of this book, her life illustrates the painful possibilities Black women born at the turn of the twentieth century faced. Mary and her husband, Hazel, had two children and were expecting their third when the owner of the plantation where they worked was killed. A manhunt began to find the killer, and more than a dozen Black men were lynched in the process while others were put behind bars. Mary tried to defend her husband. Although she was only nineteen and pregnant, she stood up for his innocence, demanding he be released from jail. This demonstration in the face of ruthless oppression was met with rage from the white residents of the city. For speaking up, she was tied by her ankles, strung upside down, set on fire, and cut open. Her unborn baby fell from her body and was crushed. Mary was then shot hundreds of times.

Black women were not safe. Black men were not safe. Black children were not safe. Violence against all Black people was justified by the law.

In the midst of all this, Jennie and Adam brought life into the world. Only one of their children survived past childhood, and her name was Alberta. She was born only four years after Mary Turner and only two hundred miles north of where Mary and her baby were brutally murdered.

Alberta was deeply loved by her parents, who gave her all of their attention and encouraged her faith as well as her education. She was born into a family of love, faith, vision, and means. She had access to resources, education, and the support of a budding congregation. From her parents, Alberta learned that everyone was equal in the eyes of God and that we all had a role to play in achieving such equality on earth. From the moment she was born, Alberta would be told that faith would guide and empower her to speak up for what she believed in. The small, happy, and influential family would buy a two-story Queen Anne–style home on Auburn Avenue, putting them only a short walking distance from Ebenezer Baptist.

In line with both the segregation laws of the South and teachings like those of Reverend and First Lady Williams, the early 1900s saw the beginnings of what is now known as the Sweet Auburn Historic District in Atlanta. Ebenezer Baptist Church was part of the Sweet Auburn community, once referred to as “the richest Negro street in the world.” In addition to congregations, Black residents established a wide range of successful businesses and social organizations. It was even home to the second-largest Black insurance company in the United States. So important to Black history is Sweet Auburn that it was designated a national historic landmark in 1976.

Thinking of the young Williams family, I feel a sense of peace and joy as I imagine them moving into their home, as I think of the lessons Jennie Celeste and Adam Daniel passed to their daughter, as I envision Alberta holding her parents’ hands as they walked to their church and back. However, being a Black family in the early 1900s was always accompanied by the possibility of unrest and interruption, and in 1906, when Alberta was only three years old, Black residents experienced one of the darkest moments in Atlanta’s history.

Tensions rose during that year’s governor’s race, where candidates inflamed and capitalized on racist ideologies, stating that if they were elected, they would put Blacks, especially “uppity” ones, back “in their place.” Fabricating stories painting Black people as criminals aiming to hurt innocent whites, newspapers continued to fan the flames with headlines like NEGRO DIVES AND CLUBS ARE THE CAUSE OF FREQUENT ASSAULTS and HALF-CLAD NEGRO TRIES TO BREAK INTO HOUSE. All of this came as backlash against the budding of a Black upper class.

On September 22, white men and boys formed mobs and began a rampage through Black neighborhoods....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Praise
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: The Circumstances of Our Birth
• Part II: The Denial of Our Existence
• Part III: Our Men and Marriages
• Part IV: The Birth of Our Children
• Part V: Our Trials, Tribulations, and Tragedies
• Part VI: Loving Our Sons
• Part VII: Losing Our Sons
• Part VIII: The Circumstances of Our Death
• Conclusion: Our Lives Will Not Be Erased
• Author’s Note
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• About the Publisher