It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hu. We know the stories of people like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. But what about their mothers? Sociologist and author Anna Malika Tubbs sheds light on the influential black women whose stories are so important and yet have been obscured and erased.

Today, we have heard TED membership conversation with Ted Current Affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rogers,

in which she also takes questions from the audience.

The Three Mothers is about Alberta King,

Bertus Baldwin, and Louise Little,

the mothers of MLK Jr., James Baldwin, and Malcolm X.

And I wrote this book to not only celebrate these three incredible life stories

that we should have known for years and years before my book, but to also think about

what their stories could symbolize for black women, black mothers, mothers more generally,

and what it could mean to save their stories from being forgotten, from being erased,

and how it changes our understanding of where we are as a nation today, how we have arrived here,

what are changes that we still need to make? That's great. I mean, I think in reading it,

you can feel how really lovingly you put all of this together and did this research and

the attention that you put to this really comes through in the finished product.

Well, we have a question from Jeff.

Jeff says that as a father, this talk changed my life.

I bought the book, a few copies, and was in the audience in December live.

And it generated this concern for me.

How much history was impacted with lack of mothers input, especially black mothers.

And that's the question.

Oh, it's a big question.

First, thank you, Def.

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