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PORTSIDE CULTURE

QUEEN MOTHER: BLACK NATIONALISM, REPARATIONS, AND THE UNTOLD STORY OF
AUDLEY MOORE  
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Tim Hirschel-Burns
November 19, 2025
Washington Independent Review of Books
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_ Meet a surprisingly influential woman you’ve likely never heard
of. _

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_Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of
Audley Moore_Ashley D. FarmerPantheonISBN: 9780593701546

Inspired by Marcus Garvey, surveilled by J. Edgar Hoover, mentor to
Malcolm X, eulogized by Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan — someone
with this sort of résumé deserves to be a household name, not to
mention a dream subject for anyone seeking a window into a century of
Black liberation movements. But, somehow, Audley Moore has escaped the
acclaim of her fellow travelers.

Rectifying this oversight is Ashley D. Farmer’s mission in _Queen
Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley
Moore_ [[link removed]]. The University of
Texas historian follows Moore’s life from her birth in Louisiana at
the tail end of the 19th century to her death three years shy of the
new millennium. 

Moore’s childhood was spent in a precarious middle ground between
extreme racial violence and an emerging Black middle class. Her
father’s untimely death cut short the family’s prospect of upward
mobility, and she bounced between unfulfilling jobs before eventually
ending up in Harlem. But it was her encounters with Garvey before
leaving New Orleans that proved foundational to Moore’s political
life, throughout which Black Nationalism served as her North Star.
Farmer writes that “it was only after she became a Garveyite that
she began to see herself as part of a global Black community.”

Moore spent much of the 1930s and 40s advancing communist organizing.
The Communist Party spent much of this same period as part of a
popular front (alongside liberals) focused on countering fascism,
although communists were quickly pushed to the margins as the Red
Scare took hold. In the first iteration of the race-versus-class
debate that would recur all her life, Moore never felt fully convinced
that communists had the interest of Black people at heart, and their
ultimate disavowal of Black Nationalism prompted her departure from
the party.

After a spell back in Louisiana that included organizing on behalf of
people incarcerated at Angola (the nickname of the Louisiana State
Penitentiary), Moore charged full force into campaigning for an
independent Black republic within the territory of the United States,
remaining skeptical of the integrationist aims of much of the Civil
Rights Movement.

With the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation serving as
a key marker, Moore called for reparations both because of their moral
justification and for their potential to serve as the financial engine
of a thriving Black nation. She urged Malcolm X to take up this call.
(He was among the first to call Moore by the title she would be
remembered by, “Queen Mother,” which elders from Ghana’s Asante
tribe later officially bestowed upon her.)

_Queen Mother _adopts an impressively transatlantic perspective,
contributing to a growing canon on the ties between Black Americans
and African-independence leaders that includes Howard W. French’s
_The Second Emancipation_ [[link removed]].
Not only did the growth of the Black Power movement lead Moore and
others to embrace their African cultural heritage, she developed close
personal and political ties to figures like Sékou Touré and Julius
Nyerere.

It was also in this period that Moore became infatuated with Ugandan
dictator Idi Amin, one of several blemishes on her record that — as
with her regressive views on gender — Farmer does not shy away from.
Moore remained connected to the African continent for the rest of her
life. She struck up a friendship with Nelson and Winnie Mandela after
Nelson’s release from prison and ultimately passed on her title of
“Queen Mother” to Winnie.

Moore’s later years were marked by a continuing commitment to the
cause even as her body slowed down. She had a small speaking role at
the 1995 Million Man March and witnessed the growth of movements like
the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, leaving
her with a sense of optimism at the time of her death. While Moore
never saw her aspirations fulfilled, Farmer writes that “her life
was a master class in striving for a dream she knew would likely never
come true.”

Farmer managed to produce this extensive biography despite the
archival limitations that contributed to Moore’s erasure. While
Moore’s artifacts are largely missing — and a fire destroyed many
of her records — Farmer nonetheless pieced together information
through interviews with Moore’s family and acquaintances, government
surveillance files, and previously undiscovered records from her
childhood in Louisiana. Although this allows _Queen Mother _to convey
the events of Moore’s life in thorough detail, the broader narrative
can, at times, get lost in the minutiae.

Still, reading _Queen Mother _leaves one with a sense of amazement
that a single person could’ve woven her way into so many nooks and
crannies of 20th-century history. Farmer’s book may well ensure that
future accounts of that history give Audley Moore her due. 

_Tim Hirschel-Burns_
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is a policy advocate and writer based in Washington, DC. He holds a
J.D. from Yale Law School and has written for publications including
the Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and African
Arguments. Find him on Bluesky at timhirschelburns.bsky.social._

* Marcus Garvey
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* the Black Radical Tradition
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* biography
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* Black Nationalism
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