In January, I read the book The Three Mothers by Anna Malakai Tubbs. The Three Mothers is a biography about the mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X, and James Baldwin shaped a nation. And about what it was like raising their children in that time period, and about their childhood and the remarkable women who raised them. They also talked about the important lessons they taught their kids as they grew up, and all the tragedies, trials, and tribulations they faced throughout their lives.

I really enjoyed this book because it’s a biography about the three mother’s lives, I love books about historical figures or historical events that changed the world. It kept me interested throughout the entire time from all the information about the mother’s lives. Some of my favorite parts were not in the paragraphs. There are these quotes on the different chapter pages, they had quotes from Audre Lorde, Margaret Sanger, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and many more extraordinary people.

My favorite character from the book was Alberta Williams King, because she was an empowering and intelligent woman. No matter what happened to Alberta, she powered through it and became a role model for her family and for many people in the world. Even though she was not treated the same as other people she was black and a woman, that didn’t let her stop her. She had three children, she founded the Ebenezer choir and worked as a church organist from 1932 to 1972. Alberta was an empowering role model, a quote to prove this statement is, “Alberta and Michael Sr. knew the importance of teaching their children about these realities despite the privileges they were able to enjoy. They were still a Black family in danger of white supremacist violence. It did not matter how educated they were, nor did it matter how nice their home was, they too faced some of the ugliest forms of racism. Alberta and Micheal had to their children how to stand up to injustice both in words and in practice. They also understood how essential it was to make sure their children knew their worth in a world where they would be pushed to question it.” (pg. 99)

This isn’t my favorite quote from the book, but it is one that shows what it was like to live in that time period. “When the country is suffering from the effects of war, economic loss, health crises, or social upheaval, the most disadvantaged groups experience the most misfortune. They are the first to lose jobs, the first to be forgotten, and the first to be unable to feed their young.” (pg. 83)

There is also another quote that’s not my favorite but has a lot of meaning, It takes place the same year Alberta’s dad died. Nine black boys were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train less than 150 miles away from Atlanta in Scottsboro, Alabama. The boys were denied a fair trial when Black people were systematically excluded from jury rolls. It wasn’t until 2013 that all the boys were posthumously pardoned by the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles. This boys were accused of this crime in 1931 and it wasn’t until 2013 they were granted posthumously pardoned, that took 82 years for them to figure out that they were innocent. The quote is, “The nine young men spent years in and out of prison and were never able to recover from the pain of the torture they endured. One died at age thirty-nine, another killed himself, another was shot in the head by a prison guard, another was denied treatment for a disease he had been originally taking the train out of town to treat, another turned to drinking. Few of the nine were able to live stable lives following the tyrannical ordeal.” (pg. 111) They could of stopped of all of these things from happening to these boys, but because they had a different skin color. They weren’t given the same things that other people could have. The nine boys could have grown up into great role models to their children or their community, but because of the things they went through only four out of the nine boys were able to recover, they still probably had trauma from what happened. It makes you think what could’ve happened to them, if these events didn’t happened.