Video library

Praised for his incisive works of narrative history, Russell Shorto never thought to write about his own past. He grew up “knowing” about his grandfather and namesake, but he maintained an unspoken family vow of silence.

Plymouth’s Mayflower families have been well-studied, but the biographies of the Black men, women, and children who were enslaved by those families and their descendants are vastly under-represented in historical research.

In this groundbreaking and essential debut work, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the stories of the women who raised and shaped three remarkable, heroic Americans: Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin.