Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore

Historian Farmer (Remaking Black Power) offers an impressive biography of pioneering Black Nationalist Audley “Queen Mother” Moore. Born in 1898 Louisiana to a formerly enslaved father, Moore witnessed the horrors of lynching and Jim Crow, and became a committed activist after hearing Marcus Garvey speak in 1922. Affiliated throughout her long life with a staggering variety of organizations, particularly after she left the Communist Party in 1957 following its disavowal of Black Nationalism, Moore nonetheless never wavered on her core tenets: reparations as “the linchpin of every other policy,” Black nationhood, and pan-African solidarity. She served as an important “maternal” mentor for younger activists, among them a reverent Malcolm X. Farmer doesn’t shy away from Moore’s ideological blind spots, like her ironically patriarchal views on women and her gushing admiration for Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (“He’s warm, he’s beautiful... he’s sweet”). While the volume’s wealth of detail is enlightening, both about Moore and the seven decades of activism in which she participated, it’s Moore’s own words that most vividly capture her staunch personality, including her defiant poem penned in tribute to Malcolm X (“And send our oppressors, where they belong/ IN HELL”) and her movingly concise plea before her death in 1997 for continuing the fight for reparations (“Keep on. Keep on. We’ve got to win”). It’s a commanding account of a tireless firebrand. (Nov.)