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

Content Warning: This section discusses racism, racial violence, and sexism.

Black women’s contributions to the Black freedom struggle are often obscured and disregarded by historical discourse. As with all women, Black women’s significance has traditionally been overlooked, and this is exacerbated by the intersectionality of race and gender discrimination. Black women had key roles as organizers, grassroots activists, demonstrators, and leaders in the 1960s civil rights movement, continuing a long legacy of political action through the 20th century. Their contributions to the struggle for social justice and equality remain pivotal, especially as they highlighted the effects of intersectional oppression due to gender, race, and class, addressing racism and sexism as common denominators of social injustice. Black women’s grassroots activism defined the course of the civil rights movement and promoted humanity and liberation for Black people and all oppressed social groups.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Black women formed their own activist organizations to battle racism within the feminist movement and sexism within the civil rights movement. As Jim Crow legislation was established in the South, organizations like the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs incorporated small, local activist groups that addressed racial violence, equal civil rights, and lynching.