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The history of whaling as an industry has been well-told in books, but few have shared the stories of whaling’s leaders of color, including those who joined the whaling industry as an alternative to life on the mainland and, especially, slavery.

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.