Elise Hu

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

I'm your host, Elise Hu.

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?

In this talk, sociologist and author Anna Maleka 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.

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

Alberta King, Louise Little, and Bertis 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.

That was Anna Maleka Tubbs at TED Women 2021.

This talk was originally published in January 2022.

If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines.

And that's it for today.

TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.

This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tansika Sangmarnivong.

This episode was mixed by Christopher Fasey-Bogan.

Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo.