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Ashley D. Farmer, "Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore" (Pantheon, 2025)
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A
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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to New Books in African American Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I'm Omari Averitt Phillips, your host of the channel. Today we'll be talking to Dr. Ashley Farmer about her new book, Queen Mother, Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore. Dr. Ashley Farmer, welcome to the show.
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C
Thank you for having me.
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B
Of course. I wonder if you could just begin by telling us just a little bit about yourself.
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C
Sure. I was born in Nashville, Tennessee, born and raised to two Fiskites, or graduates of Fisk University, and then some that went on to Meharry. And so I grew up in a family that really valued black history, particularly Southern black history. My mother was a history major, but at that time, you know, being a black woman and a historian was just not in the cards.
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B
So.
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C
So she became a social worker and eventually went back to medical school. But I offered that to just say that I really grew up in a house where people valued history, told me a lot of stories about black history, made me always know that there was a more complete story happening. So I really like to ground it there. And if you'll allow me, I also like to tell a story about archiving, because I think that's really central to this book as well. The very first time I had to write a history paper, which was in the eighth grade, that you had to do research on. And for our listeners back in the day, we used to make index cards and file them with each individual kind of source and idea because we did not have all of the technology. But anyway, when I was tasked with doing this, my father took me to the Fisk University archives and taught me about the Fisk Jubilee Singers and showed me kind of what a library was in that sense, what an archive was in that sense. And he was like, you're right about anything happening in here. So I just. I share that because I think that I ended on a circuitous route to becoming historian. I was actually a French and Spanish major in college, but I think underlying that was always this real interest in stories and this real interest in archives that comes from my upbringing.
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B
That's amazing. I'm not of that generation, but I do know of the index cards very, very well. So what brought you to this project?
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C
It's a great question. So I ended up, like I said, studying French and Spanish in college because I do so much with that now. And though it did come in handy later, we can talk about that. I ended up applying to grad school, thinking that I was going to write about black women in the Caribbean, given my linguistic background. I ended up taking an African American intellectual history class with Professor Higginbotham, who was my advisor. And there I started studying the Third World Women's alliance, an international black feminist group. Out of that grew my larger first book, Remaking Black How Black Women Transformed an Era. But as I was researching for this book, I talked to, I mean, nearly probably 40 people, and almost everybody had a story about Queen Mother Moore, right? They had met her at a rally. It was where they first heard about reparations. It was, you know, just hearing her and seeing her as a commanding presence in a room. And so I thought, well, maybe I want to write about her instead. But when I tried to go and do that, there was nothing. I mean, nothing there, right. Save a couple of oral interviews. And so it didn't feel tenable to do at, you know, kind of the graduate level. But I kind of, you know, kept the idea percolating in the back of my head. And every time I was researching about something else and found out something about her, you know, I kind of put it aside and put it in my collection, and years later, I returned to it. But I had just never seen somebody who was kind of at every major moment in black American history. In the 20th century, yet nowhere right in the archive all at once.
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B
And I want to return to some of the issues that you bring up about sort of the archival problems that you had there. But could you start. So you actually start your book by talking about Audley Moore and saying that she was one of the most consequential black nationalists of the 20th century. Could you give us just a little bit of background on who Audley Moore was and explain what made her so important?
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C
Yeah, absolutely. So Ali Moore was born in 1898 and died in 1997. So we're talking almost the entirety of the 20th century. She has a really markable story in the sense that it wasn't supposed to be this way. She was born to basically a well to do family by late 19th century standards, and lived a very charmed girlhood for a black girl growing up in Jim Crow, she calls it herself. She says that she was on her way to becoming a quote, bourgeois little stinker. So that's her own kind of understanding of what she was being trained to do as part of kind of the Louisiana and the New Orleans black elite. However, her mother died and her father died and they were kicked out of their family home. And she quickly slid down the class ladder and became a domestic worker to take care of herself and her younger two sisters. And in this time, she met a man from Jamaica who introduced her to Marcus Garvey. And Marcus Garvey came to town in New Orleans, and this really was the cornerstone of kind of her black nationalist activism. And. And I love to tell the story if you'll give me a little lead way, because it's so fantastic. So, you know, it's a muggy day in July in the 1920s in Louisiana, and all the black folks in Louisiana are going to the Longshoremen's hall, which was, of course, the meeting house for dock worker, black dock workers at the time, but just a larger kind of community center, if you will. And Audley's kind of moving slow because as she tells it, she's got a gun in her bra and a gun in her pocketbook. And this husband, the first of three, is holding a suitcase full of bullets, and they're armed because Garvey was barred speaking there the night before. And the police are going to have a strong presence, so they want to respond in kind. So they all kind of nervously take their seats and the police line the halls. But then all of a sudden, Garvey comes bounding in and his strong, booming voice talks about how glad he is to be there. And the police say they're going to arrest him again. And as she tells the story, they then take out all of their guns, put them up in the air, and chant and use it in unison. Speak, Garvey, speak. Speak, Garvey, speak. The police are so overwhelmed from the show of force that they put their guns away and leave. And Garvey takes the stage now. And Garvey's telling he was kind of the mastermind behind this, and her telling the people were the mastermind behind this. But for the purposes of this story, she sees this as a transformative moment. Here is a young black woman who is basically destitute, who saw police cower when basically police are running rampant in the Jim Crow south, killing black folks with reckless abandon, and then sits down and hears about how she's descended from kings and queens and how black people all the world need to unite and that we're a strong force that have value. There's value in her skin. There's value in her hair, and it transforms her there just to keep going. She joins Garvey's movement, moves to Harlem. Garvey gets deported, and she joins the Communists party, where she worked for the better part of 30 years. And here she sees it as a moment to work on behalf of black people, even if you don't believe in everything that the. That the organization is selling. Eventually, she abandons them in the 1950s and goes back to black nationalism for the rest of her life, creating kind of fundamental black nationalist groups on the ground, like the Universal association of Ethiopian Women, the Republic of New Africa, and starting reparations campaign. So I say all that to say that. I mean, there's a way in which she's kind of Gumpian, Forrest Gumpian, if you will, in that she is kind of in every major movement moment of the 20th century, right? Or responding to it. She's talking to the folks of the March on Washington. She's mentoring Malcolm X. She's with the Panthers. She's in African decolonization. She's everywhere. But also more than just being there, she is carrying the central ideological infrastructure of a separate black nation state in reparations and being a kind of vessel and a conduit for people to understand that in different political areas, both kind of there, but also an architect of this moment, which makes her a really consequential black nationalist.
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B
And so you also write that it stands to reason that anyone of Moore's experience and statue would be immortalized in some kind of archive. Her papers should be neatly compiled and cataloged and her art, clothes and jewelry stored in boxes in a temperature controlled room. And yet so much of Moore's remarkable life has been lost. Why is this? What sort of issues did this sort of lack of the established archive create in your research for this book? And how did you get around those sort of seeming limitations?
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C
Yeah, so just broadly speaking, we, meaning kind of the society writ large, likes are kind of key figures, Young, male and encapsulated in one period in history. Right. And more is none of those. Right. She lives to be almost 100, as I said, she moves back and forth between different periods of time, making it hard for her to categorize. She's not kind of a leading man, as you will. And then also she had a third grade education because she had to leave school to care for her sisters after her parents died. So there isn't a ton of a written record as I talk about in the book. She's kind of thinking in motion. She thinks, writes, does on the fly, which is not conducive to kind of creating stacks of paper as evidence of one's importance. Right. So all these things, I think, have left her kind of outside of traditional narratives and archiving practices, Let alone the fact that she's also, for all of her life, arguing for an oppositional politics.
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D
Right.
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C
Against the nation state. And archiving, in many ways, is bound up in the idea of kind of creating a nation, kind of creating cities, states, governments, peoples that her life is not easily contained in. So it did present a lot of challenges. One of the things that is really interesting, though, is the most kind of complete accounting of her life is actually her FBI file. Moore was tracked by the FBI from about the 1920s through the 1970s, sometimes daily. So that became an archive in and of itself in terms of how to just figure out where she was. Sometimes they had pictures of her, Sometimes the agents cut out newspaper clippings and put them in the FBI file. So that was a place to start. But also, one has to question the ethics, right. And the challenges of doing that kind of work for political black women beyond there. It really was. I kind of liken it to a black hole in a way, where, you know, you know, the black hole exists because of the light is bending around it. Right. You have to kind of find her in these places, places where you're not sure it exists, but she would have been, and see what you can do. One of the best examples, perhaps I have of that is that I knew that she was involved in the 1960s school desegregation and community struggles in New York. Right. But anything you look at doesn't say like box one folder one Queen Mother Mart. Right. But I'm searching and searching and in a folder for a whole other activist is one page and in that page is a poem that she wrote while she's in one of these desegregation struggles. Right? And so you know, you can't find it in traditional ways, but kind of have to keep searching around where, you know, the light might hit it in a different way to find where she is.
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B
Taught you about sort of the process of doing history by looking at a figure that's sort of not standard in the way that we typically think about doing historical research. Did it change sort of the way that you're thinking about sort of future projects or anything of that sort.
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Yeah.
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So, I mean, I think it helped me think a couple of things. One is that nothing is off limits.
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Right.
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C
You know, we like to categorize things in our minds, like somebody would be here because this is a nationalist group, would not be here because they're integrationist group. Right. But that is not true in terms of surviving as an activist. A perfect example with more is that, you know, for example, During World War I, World War II, you had to be incredibly patriotic to stay afloat. So there are moments when she had to move towards what we might consider the political center by, for example, joining with club women, which is not a face place you think you would find a black nationalist like her. I also think it speaks, though, to Moore's ability to stay afloat. So she tried to go into these organizations perhaps as cover, but move them right to the left in terms of her ideas. And so she didn't necessarily see it as kind of this coalition building or working with folks that didn't quite share her exact politics as a deal breaker. And so when researching, then that means that you've got to kind of keep things broad and not think just because an organization doesn't espouse a certain thing that you won't find the kind of people you're looking for in it. Right. You also have to rethink what counts as evidence. Right. And that means that we might have a broader sense of what particularly might count as intellectual production, from poems to songs. I mentioned songs in here. I have a recording that I wish could accompany the book of her singing. She has the worst voice. And her poetry is also really horrible. Some of the poetry is in the book and it is not good, guys. But, you know, wordsmith, she was not. But it really does show that this is what was on her mind in that particular moment and the best that she could feel and express it. And that can do as much kind of historical work and analytical work as a speech or a treatise or an essay can do as well.
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B
So we won't touch on the poetry or the singing, but I think this is a perfect segue. You talk about sort of Moore's tactical flexibility, and I think you just spoke a little bit to it there and how that sort of helped her maintain an organizing career that sort of spans nearly sort of seven decades. Could you talk a little bit more about sort of this idea of tactical flexibility and how it sort of manifested within Moore's life and her work? Yeah.
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C
So I think after becoming A garvey kind of switching to black nationalism. There's a couple key things that she was clear about that she wanted. She wanted an independent black nation. She wanted black self determination. She wanted black folks to be able to decide when, where, how, why they live. Right. She believed in a proponent of self defense, and she wanted control over their communities. Right. In the broadest sense. So globally, but also in the mic. Sometimes that was easy to espouse in black nationalist organizations of her own creation and not sometimes that meant that, like I said, you might join the club women's movement, you might join the Communist party and work on eliminating or making the material everyday lives of black people better by allowing them to have control over their communities, maybe through elections, maybe through their school board, maybe through owning their houses. Right. But always connecting it to the broader goal of black nationhood. Right. So I kind of liken it to she set her compass towards black nationalist liberation. So that kind of every decision that she made tried to move her there, but she also understood that isn't going to happen in one fell swoop. So what can you do to mitigate harm for black people on a daily basis while moving? Right. Another great example of how she does this is in her group, the Universal association of Ethiopian Women, a group she creates in the 1950s in New Orleans. Basically former guardians. And there every day, she is working to get black men out of jail who have wrongly been accused of raping white women and helping black women who have been kicked off welfare rules eat. But when she brings those people together to, you know, deal with those very material consequences, she starts asking people, why do you think it is that we're overpopulated in these jails? Right. Why do you think it is that your government does not want you to eat? And do you think that's ever possible? Or should you be investing in an entirely different understanding of nation and citizenship instead? So that kind of, you know, flexibility to move in and out of spaces that way to kind of survive an activist, but also that way of getting her ideas into broader spaces by not requiring everybody to agree with her to organize or help them.
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B
And so I wonder, from all of that, how does Moore's life and career help us to sort of reorient our understandings of black nationalism, the black freedom struggle, and of reparations.
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C
Great question. So I think that first and foremost, she certainly broadens our cast of characters. And by that I mean, you know, her in and of herself. But because, as I mentioned, she's kind of moving through the 20th century and working with all these different people, all of these kind of collaborations and activist relationships she forms introduces a wealth of new black nationalists into our canon beyond kind of garvey, Malcolm Farrakhan, if you will. And a lot of them are women. Right. One great example is Virginia Collins, an organizer in New Orleans with her that organized for just as long and in a lot of these same groups. I also think that it helps us understand black women as key architects of the black freedom struggle. Right. I know that we are starting to think about what it means to enter into kind of strategy and political theory, these women's ideas. But in the book, you see, you know, actual documents where she's laying out what a black republic would look like, actual documents where she's laying out what ideas about reparations would look like. And also seeing her evolve over time. So it allows for us to really think about her as one of our broader black freedom movement intellects and. And also allows us to let our historical figures change. One of the things that is that I think we're all guilty of doing is we kind of keep a figure frozen in time. I mean, Martin Luther King is a perfect example. Like, you know, we end at I have a Dream, as if right there. Even in the short life after, there wasn't a host of other evolving ideas. Right. Same for something like the Panther Party as well, stuck in one. One phase of their kind of political evolution. When you talk about somebody for this long of a period of time, it is remarkable for the things that she held fast to. But it is remarkable to also watch a thinking person evolve and take in new information and espouse different things, which is something we all need more of, but also can kind of think of a model of how we think about black liberation as an evolving thought, not one that is kind of set with these kind of classical periodizations that we have.
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B
Absolutely. And so what sort of audience did you imagine for this work as you were writing that?
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C
Yeah, so I. I really wanted it to be anybody who had heard of more. You know, I wanted to give a tribute to all those people who had been influenced. When I tell you there's nowhere that I go and talk about her where somebody doesn't have a story of. About her, but also just anybody interested in kind of the long durer of black nationalism. Right. And most importantly, though, I think what biography at its best does is a prism through which we can kind of understand a set of choices Right. Over a period of time or how somebody lived. And even if you don't 100% agree with her politics or her vision for black liberation. This biography and book is a remarkable story about just how to stay the course. Right. Knowing good and well that you will never see your vision of liberation. Right. It talks about the sacrifices one must make. And she did make some. Some she regrets, some I think she was proud of. It talks about how one, you know, buoys oneself community wise. Right. Particularly with her other sisters, for which she was organizing with for a large amount of time. So I think in a moment when we feel like, you know, we don't know what's happening and things feel like they're shifting under your feet, and also, you know, the things that maybe we thought we valued altogether are changing more. Life shows us how to kind of stay the course and set your compass towards something and move forward, whether or not. Like I said, you're. You. You think black nationalism is the way forward for black people.
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B
And I think that the tactical flexibility that you speak about is very important in that as well. And is that sort of the main takeaway that you want readers to have reading the book or are there others?
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C
Yeah. So I certainly just want people to understand that, like, you know, black women are a key part of the engine that I think grows or develops our understandings of what it means to be a black American, what our relationship to the American nation state is, but also, most importantly, like our political imaginations. Right. Whether, again, whether or not you agree with black nationalism, what I appreciate about it is that those who are the key theoreticians of it offer us really great ideas of how else we could be. And they are a constant reminder that nothing has to be this way. Right. And I think we are so. And I put myself in this, Right. You know, kind of so locked into. This is the way things have always been. This is the way. These are the only ways to organize ourselves. These only ways to exist in relationship to country, community, citizenship. Right. And black nationalists blow that out of the water. So, you know, even if you. Even if, again, the politics are not something you can get behind, I think there's a model for just thinking about how to be broad in one's political imaginations and dream different things in the hopes of, you know, purposely finding different solutions to some of the problems that we're facing.
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B
Absolutely. Well, Dr. Farmer, we've taken up a lot of your time, and thank you so much for being so generous with it. So I'll ask just one last question. What are you working on now?
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C
Oh, man. Good question. This was almost a decade long. Endeavor. So I'm gonna take a little break. But I'll say that I am intrigued or kind of stuck on or meddling with this original idea I presented about the breadth of FBI surveillance of black women and what it means to reconstruct lives from that point. So nothing formative, but I think that over the course of writing Remaking Black Power and then Queen Mother, you know, I have amassed quite a bit of information about how the state surveilled black women. And I'm interested in digging through how we use that work in the future.
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B
Sounds absolutely fascinating. I think that there are, as you mentioned earlier, sort of a lot of ethical concerns about actually using that. And I think understanding further how it is that the FBI actually surveilled people would be interesting. Would be interesting addition to those conversations that we're having.
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C
Yeah, absolutely.
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B
Well, Dr. Farmer, again, that sounds like a great project. And Dr. Ashley Farmer, I want to thank you for being on the show today. The book is wonderful, and I hope people actually go out and get it. Get two copies, actually, if you can. And thank you again. I've really enjoyed the conversation. And take care.
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C
Thank you for having me, Sam.