Midwife Crush Gallery

Black birth workers were known as more than midwives, they were postpartum doulas, lactation consultants, family counselors, health educators, and so much more.

https://wwww.healthconnectone.org/honoring-black-birth-workers-of-the-past

#blackhistory #blackbirthworkers #nbma

Have you ever wondered how the name Grand midwife ever came about?  Well, back in the early eighties in Atlanta, GA there was a community based Midwifery and Childbirth Educators collective called Dua Afe,  Whole Woman Inc.  This organization included Nasrah Smith, Shirley Tony, Lumumba Faiz and Imelda Nurridine and I.  There was also a national organization called CPAD's (Childbirth Providers of African Descent) which met each year (for a short while) which we were a part of.  We put in a bid to host the conference in 1983 in Atlanta, GA and so we did.  CPAD wanted to recognize and honor Elder retired Midwives from Georgia and Alabama.  We sought after as many Midwives as we could find who were able to travel to Atlanta to attend our conference.  Six of these iconic women came to meet and bless us with their presence and stories.  That weekend we sat at their feet and listen to them as they each told us their stories of what it was like to practice midwifery during their period of time..in the Deep South... when the Jim Crow Laws and segregation were still in effect.  They were thrilled to see young midwives continuing the legacy of midwifery and encouraged us to continue on.  We talked about them being referred to as Granny Midwives and asked them their thoughts about being called Granny Midwives and they each said they did not like the term, that it was a name carried on from slave days.  We realized how grand these midwives were and wanted to give them a title that was honorable.  Grand Midwife was suggested and they liked it!  We promised them that the usage of the term Granny would be abolished and that we would make certain that from that day forward, they would be recognized as Grand Midwives.  

- Mama Sarah Henderson

The amenities and aesthetic of CHOICES' new birth center affords all clients the same experience regardless of their insurance provider.  The decor also reflects their majority-black birth clientele.

http://ow.ly/G7J850yGfGD

#morebirthcentersmoreoptions #blackmidwivesrock #nbma

Midwives, who were often sharecroppers themselves, provided health services to poor rural women and children and health education to the entire community.  They helped public health nurses promote clinics, immunization programs, prenatal and postnatal medical examinations.  The success of official state and county health projects for African Americans depended to a large degree on the public health work of black laywomen.

https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/74710

#black midwives #blackhistory #legacy #nbma

Florida provides educational paths to licensure and requires Medicaid and private insurance to cover midwifery care.

"Of the 200 licensed midwives in Florida, about 18 are black," Amani said.  Some states have few Black midwives who may legally deliver outside of hospitals and in homes, and others have none. Florida is a model for what's possible in the South and across the country," said Amani, the National Black Midwives Alliance founder.  

"As the world celebrates the Year of the Nurse and Midwife 2020 and given COVID-19...the previous "business model" to give birth at hospitals... and the roles that birth attendants can play to ensure a safe birth should be reviewed." 

http://ow.ly/xqUP50zlJDn

#nbma

Personal-centred maternity care is a fundamental human right.  Everyone is entitled to dignified and respecful care, and that includes during childbirth http://ow.ly/BgJP50A1CXa  #blackbirthsmatter #responsiverespectfulcare #nbma

Midwives for Black Lives: "They shielded each others' daughters from the advances of white men and boys who presumed entitlement to the bodies of black women.  They spirited away brothers and sons in danger of mob violence..."  http://ow.ly/iD1C50A7Szg #birthworkherstory #nbma

Supporting doulas and midwives of color is a crucial step in ensuring the safety of birthing people of color and their babies because their model of care is inherently about reproductive and birth justice.

www.kzoo.edu/praxis/doulas

#moreblackbirthworkers #membershipfridays #nbma

“[Annie Daugherty] was the midwife of the entire town. She delivered most of all the children in [Black Mountain] for the people who couldn’t afford to go to the hospital or have a doctor no matter if they were black or white. That was my grandmother,” Katherine Daugherty Debrow told a local filmmaker in 2001.

An African American woman working and raising her own children in the early 1900s, Annie Daugherty provided vital services to mothers in the Swannanoa Valley who otherwise may have had to go through childbirth alone. “I remember stories about her being gotten up in the middle of the night in snowstorms and riding mules and everything else to go to a house to deliver babies,” Katherine continued.

Since being brought to America as slaves, African American women have historically provided midwifery services to both black and white women. According to a study at Kenyon College, “Before and after Emancipation, African American women relied upon one another for medical care…. In caring for themselves and their families, these women developed relationships with strong church, neighborhood, and family ties.”

Born in the High Top Colony community of Black Mountain on April 3, 1888 to parents Robert Morehead and Hannah Carson, Annie Morehead became part of the Daugherty family around 1900 when she married an older man from her neighborhood, Benjamin Daugherty.

The Daughertys have been a presence in the Swannanoa Valley since its beginnings, and the Daugherty name shows up in the valley as early as the 1850 census, but also on early land grants and in the 1858 upper Swannanoa tax scroll. The first African American Daughertys most likely came to the valley as slaves in the late 1700s or early 1800s, but records dating back to that period, especially records of African Americans during the 18th and early to mid-19th centuries, are difficult to track. Ben’s mother, however, according to oral tradition, was a slave of a Caucasian Dougherty family in the valley at the time of his birth.

In 1920, Ben was 70 years old, and he and Annie, who was less than half his age, had seven children—the oldest, Lillie, was 19 and the youngest, Charles, was 5.

Annie was well known in the Black Mountain community not only as a midwife, but also as a Sunday School teacher. The neighborhood children would meet at her house on Sunday mornings to walk with her the two miles from High Top Colony to the church. Annie’s dedication to the community’s children and mothers made her highly respected within the town.

“I can remember going into Black Mountain when I was a little girl,” Katherine Debrow began. “And people that she had delivered babies for, they would always give me money: pennies, dimes, nickels, quarters. I would come home and I’d have two pockets full of money.” Katherine continued, “And they called her Aunt Ann, black and white,” explaining that calling someone who was not a relative “Aunt” or “Uncle” was a sign of respect.

The hospitals that admitted African Americans were located over 15 miles away in Asheville, and thus were used little by black women in Black Mountain. Though there were a multitude of white doctors in the valley at the time, and Annie was delivering babies during the Jim Crow era, she also attended to white women.

Inez Smith Daugherty (1912-2007), Annie’s niece, explained that she only remembered two midwives in Black Mountain—Annie and another woman, Mary Hayden. Both Annie and Mary were black, so for folks—black or white—that couldn’t afford a doctor or didn’t have the time to make it to one, Annie or Mary made house calls regardless of the time of day, weather, or race of the mother.

Historically, midwives were not only called upon for deliveries, but also sent for during times of illness. Inez Daugherty, who was delivered by a midwife in Burke County, recalled in 2001, “If they got sick, the whites sent and got Aunt Annie. And not always just for delivering a baby. They would call her for a lot of other things.”  In a 2003 interview, Inez remembered, “My first cousin, she had a baby. And it had jaundice. And Aunt Mary Hayden went down to see, and she told my cousin what to get and what to do, and it cured the baby.”

But in the 1920s, state governments began to require midwives, who had traditionally been trained in the craft by one of their female relatives, to get permission slips from doctors to practice, have their homes inspected for cleanliness, and have their moral character assessed. Around this time, the government also began to ban the use of herbs and poultices traditionally used by midwives, severely handicapping what relief midwives had been able to offer their patients.

These new regulations disproportionately affected African American and low-income families. But Annie continued her practice. She began frequenting the town pharmacy for a tincture of opium called paregoric that eased the pain of childbirth.

Sadly, on March 28, 1959, as restrictions on lay midwives continued to debilitate the traditional practice, Annie Daugherty passed away in a tragic house fire that also took the life of her son, Benjamine.

By 1970 lay midwifery had been outlawed completely, thereby severing many of the strong bonds that had been built between the town’s two African American midwives and the women—black and white—in the community.  Now women were forced to pay the steeper prices for doctors and midwives had to attend modern licensing courses or give up the traditions they had been practicing for generations.

Source: SWANNANOA VALLEY MUSEUM