The stories of the mothers of influential black thinkers and activists are powerful, but have been little studied, says Anna Nti-Asare-Tubbs [2017].

As part of her PhD in Sociology, she is researching the stories of the mothers of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Junior and James Baldwin – Alberta King, Louise Little and Emma Berdis Jones – and plans to turn them into a mainstream book so they are more widely known and their influence and impact given the acknowledgement they deserve.