The “Queen Mother” of Black Nationalism

Given the ugly stain of racism for decades, Black Nationalism became a rallying cry for many Black Americans in the 1950’s and 60’s. It’s a period where Black’s became increasingly bold and daring in calling for sovereignty and self-rule in America. 

These separatist philosophies took on a number of different directions. Some called for an exclusive territorial base while others advocated for separate institutions within American society. There were those who viewed it from a secular lens while others, like the Nation of Islam, sought alignment with religious tenets. Finally, there were varying views in terms of the degree to which Black nationalist rhetoric should be tied with African culture. 

A pivotal yet little known figure in this movement was a woman known as Queen Mother Moore. Born in 1898 in New Iberia, Louisiana under the name Audley Moore, she is considered part of a canon civil rights leaders which includes the likes of Marcus Garvey, Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, Rosa Parks, and Jesse Jackson. 

Moore endured a tough upbringing and early life with her parents Ella and St. Cyr Moore having both passed away before she completed fourth grade. Moore’s grandmother, Nora Henry, who had been enslaved at birth, was the daughter of an African woman who had been raped by her enslaver.  Moreover, her grandfather was later lynched, leaving her grandmother with five children, her mother being the youngest. 

A young Audley became a hairdresser at the age of 15. After finding herself deeply moved by a speech by Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican political activist and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association she relocated to Harlem, New York, later becoming a leader in UNIA. She was an active participant in Garvey’s first international convention in New York City and was a shareholder in his Black Star Line, a steamship corporation he created in 1919. 

Over the years, Moore became an influential figure in the Civil Rights Movement as founder and president of the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women as well as the founder of the Committee for Reparations for Descendants of U.S. Slaves. In one of her many trips to Africa in 1972, she was given the distinction of being anointed the title "Queen Mother" by members of the Ashanti tribe of Ghana. 

“Queen Mother” Moore championed the importance of documenting racial disparities and their deep impact on Black and brown skin people. In 1957, she petitioned the United Nations, demanding land for Black Americans along with billions of dollars of reparations. Six years later in 1963, she launched and spearheaded the Committee for Reparations for Descendants of U.S. Slaves.

Her last public appearance was alongside Jesse Jackson at the Million Man March in 1995. She died of natural causes at 98 in Brooklyn, New York. 

In her book "Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era,” Dr Ashley D. Farmer, a prominent historian of black women's history, intellectual history, and radical politics and Associate Professor in the Departments of History and African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin notes: 

“As one of the movement’s midwives, Moore had been fighting for black self-determination longer than most of her audience members had been alive. She used the speaking invitation to proffer an alternative genealogy of the Black Power era, one in which 1960s protests were the continuation rather than the origin of the movement.”

Moore, she says, was among “a cadre of activists who were instrumental in developing the ideological frameworks of the Black Power era and in formulating gendered expressions of its central principles.” 

As a lifelong black nationalist, Moore, according to Dr. Farmer was a key figure among postwar Black women radicals in the push towards Black emancipation, “all tied to new definitions of Black “self identity” that Stokley Carmichael and other key Black Nationalist figures would argue was the foundational basis for Black Power projects.” 

Farmer, in fact, is writing a new book entitled “Queen Mother Audley Moore: Mother of Black Nationalism” (forthcoming from UNC Press), the first biography of one of the most influential yet underrecognized activists and thought-leaders of the 20th century.  

The book will explore Moore's life and activism from 1898 to 1997, offering a deep look at her journey as an important but yet overlooked progenitor of Black Nationalist thought and activism. Moreover, it will provide a broad scope look at the ideological narratives and history of twentieth- century black nationalist movements, moments, and organizations.

——