Beyoncé’s mom recalls tragedy that changed her family forever

Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, recalled a harrowing tragedy that shook her family to its core, one whose effects still linger among the members.

In her new memoir Matriarch, the 71-year-old recounted her days growing up in Galveston, Texas, amid segregation and overt racism with her parents and five siblings.

Among other graphic details of the racial profiling and injustices, she shared one incident which involved the beating of her older brother Lumis "Skip" Joseph Beyoncé. 

That painful memory from 1967 “changed my family forever,” she described.

In her book, the now mother of two explained that when her elder brother, in his teenage years, was returning home from a date one night, a taxi accidentally dropped him off at the wrong address.

The neighbour who saw a man on their porch called the police. Although they later recognized Skip and tried to explain, saying "he's a good boy," the officers, who aggressively arrested Skip, didn’t heed neighbour's plea.

Skip’s family was alerted about the situation by the neighbour, and upon their arrival at the scene, they were met with a horrific sight.

"'Please don’t let them kill my son.' She said it over and over, a sobbing prayer," Knowles remembers her mother's pleas to the one Black officer who was at the scene.

The next day, they were summoned to the station to pick up Skip, who was covered in blood.

"They could have killed him... we thought he was dead," the American bussinesswoman, now looking back on the incident, wrote. "The constant fear and anxiety my parents had was all from that experience."

From that point on, her family faced constant harassment, forcing them to stay on guard at all times. Knowles even revealed she was once arrested by the same officer who had assaulted her brother.

Although Knowles' mother became increasingly anxious, always concerned for her children’s safety and well-being, she never gave up on participating in Civil Rights protests, determined to help improve conditions for Black people in Galveston.