The image that graces the cover of historian Ashley Farmer’s new biography of Pan-African activist Audley “Queen Mother” Moore is no less regal than the iconic photograph of Black Panthers founder Huey Newton in a rattan throne chair that many of us are more familiar with.
Moore sits in an old striped armchair, wearing an African-print caftan and headdress, neck draped with beads, wrist adorned with bangles. Behind her, portraits of Malcolm X and Winnie Mandela hang on the wall. But, as Farmer notes in her introduction to Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore (out from Pantheon on November 4), “What we know of Audley Moore, one of the most important activists and theorists of the twentieth century, remains largely confined to a few photos such as this one—a seven-decade history of struggle distilled down to a few still shots. Until now.”
