Granny Midwives Oral History Project

Granny Midwives Oral History Collection

Collection Items

  • "There were so many of the household remedies that my grandmother did, and people were cured by just her recommendation, by her prescription, unwritten."

  • "I can tell you this about midwife delivery: I’d rather have midwife delivery than hospital delivery, if you wanted to compare the two..."

  • "Ms. Perry Lee traveled all over the plantations all around in Flora, all around down in there where my daughter-in-law and them stayed, everywhere."

  • "You know, the hospitals—that being rural Mississippi, Blacks were not allowed to go to the hospitals that were available at that time."

  • "They would follow the almanac and the weather, and they was able to dictate if the weather was a certain way, oh, she would deliver tonight."

  • "I knew that she was a midwife, and I know I trusted her, because then everybody knew about her. Everybody in the community knew when we was growin’ up."

  • "She went to deliver when they came to get her. I don’t care if it was stormin’, sleet, snow, whatever, what time of night. She got up."

  • "...we worked with the midwives who delivered babies in the home...helped them learn more scientific information, and...also to teach this to the mothers..."

  • "...whooping cough, measles, and all types of illnesses like that. She had a remedy for everything you had. She had some type of remedy."

  • "And so those midwives must’ve been mighty well trained, because they knew their craft, and they took care of those babies."

  • "...during those times, there was some friction between midwives and doctors, in the sense that most of the conversations they had were between women..."

  • "I don't know what her fee was but they would give her goods, groceries, vegetables, those kind of things, in lieu of payment and she never complained."

  • "You can’t just discuss the midwife without discussing our way of life. So it’s really a vital part of history, and it deals with all of us..."

  • "...she was the known midwife here, and she delivered most of the babies, because at that time it was $25 to deliver a baby, and she delivered most..."

  • "And everybody coming in this clinic—I mean that was in the clinic, that was working—all white. And when I had come in, they knew I was coming but they didn't know—I don't think they knew I was Black. I could tell then that somebody was gonna have a problem and I wasn't counting on it being me. And it wasn't me.”

  • "...it’s just been such a stigma placed on it, to feel like just because people are doctors that they’re better than midwives, or nurse midwives..."

  • "And she came and even washed clothes for them, and took care of the house. She practically took over the house. That’s why she was known as Mama Janie."

  • "Mama Clara, she gave birth—she was the midwife of all of my family, and all the other was in the family, and everybody had 10, 15 children."

  • "...she was a outreach person, helpin’ children, you know, everybody that she could. She always would go round, helpin’..."

  • "...she start slowin’ down with midwife, but she went with another midwife to help them out. She was helping Ms. Sadie Colman out, Virginia Powell."

  • "She had a bag, and she had a white pan that was trimmed in red that she would wash the baby in. In her bag, she had her tools that were sterilized."

  • "I’m a member of the church. She did that for $15. And believe you me, we didn’t have the $15. Paid her $5 this week and $5 the next week, $15."

  • "She was the community midwife, she worked the whole community which I stay in, and you know she, that was her job. She went from house to house."

  • "Most of them wore white uniforms, but if they didn’t have the uniforms they’d always wear the white apron."
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