Oral histories · In their own voices

The archive speaks.

Listen to Mississippi memory carried through testimony: remedies, resistance, clinical care, family, and the knowledge surrounding birth.

The Granny Midwives Oral History Project

The project records family members and community residents who were delivered by granny midwives or whose families experienced their care. It asks how midwives shaped childbirth and maternal care—and how their influence reached children, families, and community life.

These statewide stories expand the historical record and challenge gaps in how Black women's labor has been represented in archives and museums. Project materials are stewarded through collaborations with the Margaret Walker Center and the Smith Robertson Museum.

“For six weeks after the baby were born she would always come every week and see how we were doin’.”
Rosie Lee Lloyd

“Grandmother was well respected. She was loved by members of the community and by her family.”
Alma McPherson-Fisher

“The midwife would come in sleet, rain, or snow and tell the household to prepare hot water, blankets, and quilts.”
Laverne Griffin

Interviewed July 30, 2021

Bessie Lee Gardner & John Matthews, Jr.

They remember Bertha Henderson Matthews’s black leather medical bag—carried with the authority of her practice, and later lost to the family’s knowledge.

Interviewed by Dr. Janice K. Neal Vincent

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