by Herb Boyd
On this Mother’s Day, May 12, 2024, we were reminded of royalty and the life and legacy of Queen Mother Moore. It’s been 27 years since we published our obituary, and this is a good and propitious moment to recall her incomparable activism. Her name was invoked in part by a call from a young scholar interested in reaching Queen Mother Delois Blakely of Harlem, whom many remember as pushing her mentor and namesake around in a wheelchair.
Born Audley Moore was born on July 27, 1898, in New Iberia, La., to Ella and St. Cyr Moore, both of whom died before Audley reached the fourth grade. She was raised by her grandmother, Nora Henry, who had been enslaved at birth and was the daughter of an African woman raped by her enslaver, a doctor. The family was victimized earlier when her grandfather was lynched, leaving her grandmother with the task of raising five children.
When she was a teenager, Audley became a hairdresser. Her political activism began after she saw a film about Marcus Garvey, which inspired her to move to New York City and become a member of his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). She was present at the UNIA’s first international convention in Harlem and purchased stock in the organization’s Black Star Line. This association was the beginning of her long journey on the ramparts of the civil and human rights movement.
After Garvey was convicted and sentenced to prison for allegedly using the mail to defraud, Moore continued her activism as a member of the Communist Party (CP) in 1936. “She was an active street agitator and orator, enjoining Harlemites to come to the aid of Ethiopia in its invasion by Italy,” Muhammad Ahmed wrote in the “Encyclopedia of the American Left.”
Two years later, Moore was the CP’s candidate for the state assembly from the 21st District, and in 1940, she ran for alderperson for the 19th Assembly District. In 1941, with no success in the electoral arena, she was elected to the leadership of the CP in Harlem, and for the next several years, she was a prominent party leader. She left the party in 1950 after being a vocal member seeking attention to the Negro Question.
No longer affiliated with the CP, she lent her political commitment to other agendas, including founding the Universal Association of Ethionian Women with her sister and others, where they demanded the ending of lynching.
When Robert Williams and Malcolm X began commanding the headlines for their struggle for justice and liberation, Moore found the kindred spirits she was seeking. She lent her voice and dedication to the founding of the Republic of New Afrika and was soon taking a stand for reparations, which would lead to perhaps her most long-standing demand.
In the late 1950s, Moore presented a petition to the UN arguing for self-determination and land reparations, and against genocide, which expanded her reputation as a freedom fighter.
“Throughout the 1960s, Queen Mother Moore’s presence became a catalyst for the new generation of ‘Black Power’ advocates,” Ahmed wrote.
For the next ensuing decades, she found a way to fuse her activism with Black nationalism, socialism, and Pan-Africanism. In 1972, she took her first trip to Africa and received the chieftaincy and honorific title of “Queen Mother” from members of the Ashanti People in Ghana. In one of her last public appearances, she appeared on the podium next to Jesse Jackson during the historic Million Man March in October 1995.
Moore died of natural causes on May 2, 1997, at age 98 in a Brooklyn nursing home.