The Three Mothers by Anna Malaika Tubbs

Author:Anna Malaika Tubbs [Tubbs, Anna Malaika]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

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When Berdis’s little boy Jimmy grew up, he became known to the world as the acclaimed writer James Baldwin, whose brilliance, eloquence, and passion were unmatched. He unapologetically forced readers to deeply examine their society and the role each played in its making. He once said, “I never had a childhood.… I did not have any human identity.… I was born dead.” His words were not only an explanation of his life but a commentary on the Black experience in America.

In many ways, Jimmy was forced to grow up faster than other children. He felt that he “never had a childhood” because he was the eldest in his family and his mother’s right-hand man. To help support her and his siblings, he worked small jobs, like shining shoes, as soon as he was old enough to do so. He was sent to run errands for the family, like buying day-old bread and other groceries at lower prices. He helped to feed, change, and raise his younger siblings.

Jimmy’s environment also forced him to grow up. As hard as Berdis tried, she could not shield her son from the harsh realities of poverty and discrimination. As a child, Jimmy saw friends he’d once sat next to in church turn to drugs; some became pimps and others prostitutes on the street. He was well aware that in the society he was born into, his life and those of his friends were deemed less important and less valuable than the lives of his richer and whiter counterparts. They were seen and treated as if they “did not have any human identity,” denied access to opportunities, and many of them were forced to give up on their futures.

Struggling to make ends meet, the Baldwins moved from place to place all around Harlem. Everywhere they went, from their apartment on Lenox Avenue on the west to the one by the Harlem River on the east, from their place on 135th Street on the north to their home on 130th Street on the south, they experienced the effects of racism and classism firsthand. Jimmy could recall multiple times when his safety was threatened as a young Black boy and where another person made him feel inhuman.

When he was ten years old, Berdis sent him out to collect firewood for the family. He was walking down the street when suddenly he felt hands on him, pushing him into a vacant lot. Two white police officers stared down at him. They said he matched the description of a suspect they were looking for. Jimmy was terrified, and he did not resist when they searched him. When they’d tormented him enough, they left him lying there alone, flat on his back. This disregard of his rights, this denial of his dignity, pushed him to feel that as a poor Black boy in America, he was “born dead.”

Yes, he was born into circumstances that forced him to grow up and a society that degraded him, but he balanced these pressures by keeping an eye on his education.

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