Anna Malaika Tubbs
Anna Malaika Tubbs is a scholar and author whose debut book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation, published in 2021, became a New York Times bestseller and an important work of historical recovery. Born in Los Angeles, Tubbs earned her bachelor’s degree from New York University and completed her Ph.D. at Cambridge University, where her research focused on Black motherhood, intersectionality, and the social construction of race and gender.
The Three Mothers recovers the lives of Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin — women who raised three of the twentieth century’s most transformative figures yet were largely invisible in the historical record. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and interdisciplinary scholarship, Tubbs reconstructs each woman’s biography and argues that the values, resilience, and intellectual curiosity they instilled in their sons were foundational to the movements and literature those sons created. The book is both a work of biography and a feminist intervention in how we tell stories of American history.
Tubbs has spoken and written widely about Black maternal history, the erasure of Black women from public memory, and the intellectual traditions of the Black church and community. Her work has been featured in media outlets including NPR, CBS Mornings, Time, and Essence. She is an advocate for maternal health equity and continues to speak about the structural forces that shape the lives of Black mothers in America.
Tubbs is married to Stockton, California mayor Michael Tubbs, with whom she has co-authored and collaborated on public work around poverty, universal basic income, and civic renewal. Her own scholarly and authorial voice, however, stands distinctly on its own terms, and she is recognized as an important new voice in African American history and women’s studies.
