You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.

I'm your host, Elise Hugh.

I have three daughters and a mom who is alive and well.

So with Mother's Day, just a few days away here in the U.S., maybe it's no surprise.

We keep coming back to the same question.

How well do we actually tell the stories of mothers?

Every year, around January 15th, the world rightfully celebrates the birth of the great

Martin Luther King Jr.

Yet virtually no one has stopped to consider who else was in that room that day in 1929.

As if somehow MLK Jr. birthed himself.

In this talk, sociologist and author Anna Malika Tubbs makes the case that the way we tell or don't tell the stories of moms has consequences far beyond hurt feelings. It shows up in

policy or the lack of it. If the stories we told of mothers reflected their presence, their importance,

their power, their influence, their wholeness, and their humanity, then it would be easier for everyone

to appreciate their roles and back them with the support that they deserve.

Anna traces the remarkable lives of three women many people have never heard of.

Alberta King, Louise Little, and Bertus Baldwin, the mothers of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X,

and James Baldwin, three women who were activists, scholars, and leaders in their own right,

long before their sons became icons, and whose stories quietly reshaped the ones we thought we already knew.

That's coming up right after a short break.

And now our TED Talk of the Day.

Every year, around January 15th, the world rightfully celebrates the birth of the great Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yet virtually no one has stopped to consider who else was in that room that day in 1929.

...