The women who made Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and James Baldwin

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M otherhood is said to be its own reward. You learn to give of yourself, and this will stretch you, as a person. But you may also learn to put yourself in the background, which will shrink you – and even make you disappear. History does this to us anyway, argues scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs. Black women in particular are largely erased from the American historical trajectory – marginalised, at best. Tubbs tries to remedy this with a new book about women who gave birth to extraordinary men, women who “have been hidden not only behind their sons but also behind their husbands ... presented as footnotes that are out of context”. In The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr,...

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