Reclaiming Midwives

[WombanAuset]

Reclaiming Midwives: Pillars of the Black Community
Natural Childbirth Has a Long History in the Black Community
by: Monica Z. Utsey
Though natural childbirth seems like a foreign concept to many African American women today, it wasn't always the case. Natural childbirth was the rule, rather than the exception in the deep southern states and Black women were the ones catching the babies.

“Reclaiming Midwives: Pillars of Community Support� opened November 13 at the Smithsonian's Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture and will be on view until April 2, 2006. It is the untold story of African American midwives – beginning with 17th century practitioners using child-birthing methods they brought from Africa and ending with a 21st century nurse-midwife who uses some of those practices today. This exhibition places these skilled women at the center of health and social support systems in Black communities past and present.

An exhibition team headed by Linda Janet Holmes has assembled more than 150 items to show that African American midwives had a long history of providing care that extended beyond birth to include general health and social support. For more than a century midwives also maintained ties to African-based rituals and customs.

“This exhibition is a result of 20 years of passion and the realization of one's visions,� said Linda Janet Holmes, lead curator and co-author of the 2003 book Listen to Me Good: The Life Story of an Alabama Midwife .

The exhibit features 35 1950s-era photographs by architectural and fine art photographer Robert Galbraith and Library of Congress photographs dating to the late 1800s. The legendary Mrs. Mary Francis Coley and her family are featured in this exhibit. Coley and her family are also the subjects of George Stoney's 1953 award-winning documentary (also being shown at the museum) “All My Babies: A Midwife's Own Story,� featuring film footage by Galbraith. The film was commissioned by the Georgia State Health Department as a midwifery training film during a time when most films downgraded Black midwives.

The Coley family had no idea the film existed until recently. Coley's son and grandson were in attendance last month at the opening talk on the exhibit. Bernard Coley, Jr., has created the Coley Family Association and a website that are dedicated to preserving the historical legacy of the Coley family.

“I was born by a midwife in Georgia ,� said Bernard Coley, Sr., Coley's son. “My mother was a sociologist and a welfare system for the economically deprived.�

Many midwives held the same status and prestige as Black preachers in the community and believed midwifery was a calling. Black midwives thought of themselves as chosen people by God.

Early midwifery was characterized by spirituality, tradition, culture and apprenticeship. Midwifery was passed down from mother to daughter. For many of the midwives, who often were not paid for their work, birthing babies was God's work and something that was done for the sake of the community and not money. Most importantly, Black midwives were holistic in their approach, often walking for miles to deliver babies and returning afterwards to make sure that the mother had food and to help the new mother care for younger children. Black Midwives kept alive African-based birth rituals such as the burial of the placenta, keeping a fire burning in the days following a birth, not sweeping the house, smoking the house with cornmeal and walking the baby around the house saying the Lord's Prayer. Black midwives also used herbs and other natural remedies. The new mother also enjoyed a month-long rest after birthing, something that is sorely missing from the lives of new moms today. They did all this despite on-going assaults and condemnations from the medical establishment. As recently as 1950, Black midwives cared for as many as 50 percent of all Black babies born in some southern states.

“A midwife's counsel and advice was respected and she was seen as a wise woman and leader in her community,� said Holmes.

Over time, cultural shifts and medical innovation, regulations and deliberate efforts by the health care system to stamp out Black Midwives took its toll. What remains today is only a fragment of a midwifery system that was once controlled by Black women.

The exhibit ends with a focus on Marsha Jackson, a local African-American midwife and co-owner of Birth Care, an Alexandria-based center that has provided an alternative to hospital births since 1987. A fellow of the American College of Nurse Midwives, Jackson is among those African American midwives who are keeping African American midwifery alive.

For more information:

Anacostia Museum
1901 Fort Place S.E.
Open Daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, except. Dec. 25.
Admission is free
202.633.4820

www.anacostia.si.edu

www.reclaimingmidwives.org

www.coleyfamily.org

www.birthcare.org

Monica Z. Utsey is a freelance writer, wife, homeschooling mom and President of the Southern DC Chapter of Mocha Moms, Inc.