Donny Bryant:

Hello, everyone. This is Donny Bryant. Today, with great sadness, I am not here with my lovely co-host, Dr. Barbara Holmes. Today I am actually with our dear friend, Corey Wayne, who is the director of Events and Production at the CAC. And Corey has been a partner with Dr. B and myself in the production of The Cosmic We.

Today, Corey and I together would like to share some very unfortunate news to some and a reminder to others that our lovely mentor, friend, mom, Dr. B, has transitioned from being an elder into the great community of saints as an ancestor. She’s passed on and today we are still processing. We have been able to celebrate her life, her legacy with family and friends, and with our community at the CAC. But we wanted to take a moment to share with our listeners and our community here who support the CAC and The Cosmic We some of our memories and our experiences working with Dr. B here on The Cosmic We. You got anything, Corey, you wanted to share with our friends and our loved ones who have journeyed with us over this last, what, five or six seasons?

Corey Wayne:

One of my favorite things about working with Dr. B over the last four years is she, more than most people that I can ever imagine, was a great mirror. And what I mean by that was I did not know her when we first started working together. I knew of her works. I had read her books through The Living School, but I didn’t know her. And I was interviewing her about The Cosmic We, this was right before you came into the picture, and I remember asking her, :What do you want the show to be about? What do you want the tone to feel like? What do you want the impression of the show to be?” And Dr. B would always lovingly refer to her own weirdness. And she’s like, “I want it to be weird.” And I got the sense from conversations that of the many groups that she’s been involved with throughout her career, that was one area of her persona or her personality that maybe didn’t shine as bright.

So I always thought to myself, :I’d love to lean into your weirdness. I think that would be great, especially in a show that is trying to be The Cosmic We.” And so through all of that, we developed a deep friendship. And in my personal life, Dr. B talked to me for hours and hours on the phone. She would always give you personal advice that you didn’t ask for, but that you needed. And I always appreciated that about her. She advised on my undergraduate degree that I was doing in my 30s, because we shared a degree in sociology. She was a great mentor at advising me through cultural difficulties and also a pro at dating advice whenever it was needed. But Donny, I’m curious, you’ve known Dr. B much longer than I have. Who was she to you? And then later I would like to hear about the funeral. I know you got to do the funeral, so just curious.

Donny Bryant:

Yeah, when I first got the call from George, Dr. B’s husband, that she had about a few days to live, it was really shocking, Corey, because we had discussed so many things recently about plans, things that we wanted to do. We had meetings that we were going to meet at and get together. I had planned to go down and spend some time with her when she was able to physically walk again. So we had all these plans that are now unrealized. And I realized how much she meant to me, not just as a partner on The Cosmic We, Corey, but as almost like a mother figure in my life.

I tell people, I almost forgot the age gap that we had, because Dr. B, there was such a joy, a childlike joy that she always carried. She was hilarious. She had a sense of humor that was just always present. There was a sense of honesty. And I was fortunate enough, as you indicated, to be at the funeral. I officiated and gave the final eulogy at her funeral at the request of her family. And Corey, Dr. Victor Anderson, who was her PhD advisor at Vanderbilt, he said that one word he defined B, or Barbara as he called her, Barbara A. Holmes, he said she was audacious. And he kept calling her audacious, audacious. And at the funeral while he was saying this, I immediately realized that the A in her name does not mean Ann for her middle name, it means audacious. Barbara Audacious Holmes.

Corey Wayne:

I love that.

Donny Bryant:

But there was something that I think Barbara wanted all of us to know. She did leave a message, if you will, with her son Jason Stokes. Jason was there, I believe, with Barbara on the evening before she passed. And Barbara was in and out of consciousness as he indicated. And at the funeral, Jason communicated in a very beautiful way an encounter that he had with his mom. And he indicated that mom gave him a message to share with people. And she specifically said, “Jason, I want you to share this message with everyone.” He said, “Tell everyone to forgive everyone for everything. Forgive everyone for everything.” And now I think I understand, Corey, what Dr. B means where she says the ancestors would oftentimes speak to her. Because since her passing, since her transition, she has been speaking to me through some of these messages, some of these quotes, not only her writing, not only her work, but through this command, if you will, of forgive everyone for everything.

Corey Wayne:

And that message of forgive everyone for everything is so on point for where we find ourselves culturally and for navigating this world. Because a lot of Dr. B’s work was situated for a time such as this. I think right now we look at everything happening around the globe and in our own country, everybody should be having their hands on Crisis Contemplation or Race and the Cosmos, or Liberation and the Cosmos. All of her works are just like she will live on forever through her works. And so I’m excited to see where we turn to next in the show as we work to keep her teaching alive.

Donny Bryant:

Absolutely, absolutely. And I look forward to partnering with you to continue to live the wisdom of Barbara forward. I’m excited to work in partnership, to continue the beauty of her spirit and to share the learned wisdom, the experience, the wisdom that we have with her and to mirror that, as you indicated, to the world. It’s not surprising that our final episode happens to be with Dr. Barbara Holmes’ cousin, Linda Holmes. This episode, many of you don’t know, was intended to be part of our previous season, but for various reasons it was delayed and held back. And Corey, we were trying to figure out what’s the best way to share this episode. This is a very unique episode, a unique episode specifically because it’s two cousins having a wonderful conversation about their life as children. And so I hope you guys enjoy this upcoming episode with Dr. Barbara Holmes and her cousin, Linda Holmes on The Cosmic We.

Corey Wayne:

As we leave you with this final episode, and if there’s things that you would like to share about how Dr. B’s work has impacted your life, you can share that with us by email at [email protected], that’s P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S @ C-A-C.org. Or you can leave us a voicemail at cac.org/voicemail. Any kind of feedback that we get, we will share with her family so they can feel the impact that she has had on your life. And with that, we look forward to seeing you in 2025 for a brand new season of The Cosmic We, and we leave you with this episode with Linda Holmes.

Dr. B:

Hello to our listening audience. Donny and I have been out for a few weeks as I attended to my health. And amazingly enough, our topic today is women’s healthcare. Donny and I are delighted to introduce you to my gifted and much loved first cousin, Linda Janet Holmes. Donny, as the old folks used to say, I’m going to try to let you get a word in edgewise, but I have so much to ask her so just jump right in when you can.

Donny Bryant:

Absolutely.

Dr. B:

So let’s start with a brief excerpt. Welcome, Linda.

Linda Holmes:

Thank you so much, Barbara.

Dr. B:

Your career includes service as director of New Jersey’s Office of Minority and Multicultural Health. You served as a research scientist for the New Jersey Department of Public Health. I didn’t know that. Linda is an amazing writer, independent scholar, curator, and long time women’s health activist. Her writing includes articles in medical journals and essays in feminist journals that have been pivotal in contributing to a resurgence of international recognition of the significance of African American midwifery practices.

Briefly, her publications include, Listen to Me Good: The Life Story of an Alabama Midwife, A Joyous Revolt: Toni Cade Bambara, Writer and Activist, and just this year, Safe in a Midwife’s Hands offers a critical connection between midwifing practices on the continent of Africa and the diaspora. Finally, our audience needs to know that Linda and I are not just first cousins, but we grew up in the same multifamily house owned by my dad and my uncle Bob, Linda’s dad. It was like an extended family situation. Now, I’ve written about growing up in that house as a nurturing and supportive family system. Linda, do you have memories that you can share with us about those growing up years and that house together?

Linda Holmes:

Yes. Barbara, thanks for that wonderful introduction. I think I would like to get a copy of it and send it to others when they introduce me. It really covered my life in a wonderful way. So yes, it was almost like we had our village, right? And when I was on the continent in Africa, it was often this family village where there were generations in their huts, in their circle of family. And we had that on Cambridge Street in the middle of an urban community.

Dr. B:

We did. Oh boy was it urban.

Linda Holmes:

Yes, yes, yes. And East Orange is like four square miles, right? The whole town, four square miles.

Dr. B:

Yeah, yeah.

Linda Holmes:

And at that time, East Orange was very divided, right? There was the Black part of the four square miles, and there was the white part of the four square miles.

Dr. B:

That’s right.

Linda Holmes:

We were in the Black part of the four square mile. But our dads, I still don’t know how they did it. I’m so sorry I didn’t think to talk to my dad more about this, but I think it was through the GI Bill.

Dr. B:

It was.

Linda Holmes:

Yes, yes.

Dr. B:

But they pooled their money, I mean like a village. They came together, pooled the money, and then made sure the family had apartments in the six family house that they bought together.

Linda Holmes:

Yes. Because our grandmother was on one floor, the top floor for a brief period of time. Your dad and family, right, on the first floor. Then Aunt Leola. Aunt Lee.

Dr. B:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Linda Holmes:

The sister, right? Also in the same apartment building. And there might’ve been… It’s six family, so there might’ve been the kind of folks that were paying rent as tenants, maybe like two families or something like that.

Dr. B:

Right, maybe two. Everybody else was free.

Linda Holmes:

And we talked about this recently, but in the summertime, Aunt Lee would have these kind of shows or programs that she would do, and we would all have a song to sing or something, whatever, and everyone would come and gather around in her place. And then the backyard, right? We had this backyard-

Dr. B:

Oh, the backyard. I remember that.

Linda Holmes:

Yes, yes, where we would share that space. So it was definitely the Holmes Family Village.

Dr. B:

It was. And I thought that everybody grew up like that in a village of family living all in the same place. That’s what I thought. You mentioned Aunt Leola, and I’ve spoken about her often on the podcast. I remember that she was a mystic and she could talk to dead folks. And she, when they passed, could tell you how it looked, where they were, what age range they’d chosen to represent themselves at. And then to prove that it wasn’t just made up she’d say, “Oh, Barbara, you know that earring you lost the other day? It’s behind the sink.” She would tell you what they told her. And then we got warnings and messages. And I’ve got many a warning and message from my grandmother and my dad. So I don’t know, did any of those weird stories get to you?

Linda Holmes:

So that the listeners of the program know that you are six years older than I am.

Dr. B:

Yes, I am. And proud of it.

Linda Holmes:

And you are the oldest of the generation.

Dr. B:

I am. I am. But we don’t need to say how old.

Linda Holmes:

No, no. But what I think in terms of the relationship with Aunt Lee, I think you had some privilege there in terms of her passing on to you in a very special way some of that heritage around the presence of the elders or the ancestors spiritually, that I didn’t quite frankly get directly. But what I do know is that she was the person in my later years that we counted on to go to to learn the family history, to know about who the great great grandmother was and who she looked like and who looked like somebody else that was in that generation. But my relationship with her was more about I remember she did my hair for some reason. I don’t know how that happened.

Dr. B:

She did mine too.

Linda Holmes:

I wonder what that was about. Yeah, she wanted us to be beautiful.

Dr. B:

Not only that, there was a connection between family bonding and the African continent and hair braiding, hair fixing. There’s something about that that just reinvigorates the connections between family members. They sit, they braid hair. It takes a long time, a lot to talk about, songs get sung.

Linda Holmes:

And she was the youngest in the family for our dads, right?

Dr. B:

Right.

Linda Holmes:

So she was so protected and so beloved. But you never felt that she was the youngest with them, but there was this idea that something about her needed to be preserved, to be recognized and to be honored, yeah.

Dr. B:

Well, although she was the youngest, they listened to her because she had connections to the ancestor world they didn’t have. But if anybody did anything to Aunt Lee, my daddy and your daddy went marching up to that third floor or second floor, whatever it was, saying, “Hey, hey, hey, what’s up?” She was very protected, very protected. You know what? That house produced two writers, you and me. When did you know you were a writer?

Linda Holmes:

Oh, that’s a really great question that I don’t think I’ve answered before. Maybe I didn’t answer it this way because I wasn’t talking to a family member. But in third grade, we were assigned to write a poem, and I wrote this poem, and my dad was an optician, he came home late from work, and my mom wasn’t really into the writing part of things ever, really. She was more into, “Did you get your homework done?” But not into, “Let me see what you wrote.” But my dad said, “Well, what did you write?” And I said, “I wrote this poem.” And he read it and he thought he was really good, but he thought maybe he needed to tweak it a little bit or something. That’s the way I see it now. So he did whatever.

But anyway, the poem, which was basically my poem, but edited somewhat lightly by my dad, when Mrs. Boyd, my third grade teacher, read the poem she was like, “Wow, this poem is amazing. This poem is incredible.” It started with, “Every night at the strike of 12:00, I quickly jump out of bed,” these were my words, “And there before me stands a fellow dressed in red.” Now I don’t even remember the rest of it, but that’s how it started. And so she was thinking, “For a third grader, this is real imagination and she’s willing to put it on paper.”

So it ended up being read at the PTA meeting at Washington School by the principal. And my father, Uncle Bob for you, knew that the poem was going to be read at the PTA meeting. Although my dad, they were always involved with PTA so that wasn’t exceptional. And I was asked… At third grade, little girls and boys, they don’t go to PTA meetings. So I had a chance to go to the PTA meeting and read my first poem to all the teachers in the school, the parents, the whatever. And Mr. Romick, the principal, was really excited. And it was really interesting because this is when the school… Washington School at that point, was still predominantly white children. She was the teacher who presented the poem. She was the first teacher of color in that school, Mrs. Boyd.

Dr. B:

Wow.

Donny Bryant:

Wow.

Linda Holmes:

And so when that happened, and I got to be this superstar, and my dad could stand proudly knowing that he had added a few words and tweaked the poem a little bit, right, that’s when I said, “Okay.” This is what I was first known for. And then in sixth grade, I had this amazing sixth grade teacher, Ms. Mendel. And you know when you get your little autograph book signed?

Dr. B:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Linda Holmes:

By your teachers at Washington School?

Dr. B:

Yeah.

Linda Holmes:

So this particular teacher, I gave her the yellow page of my book, and she said, “Yellow, my favorite color. And Linda, my most creative student.”

Dr. B:

Oh, how sweet. So that helped you to identify who you are. What’s weird is I found out I was a writer by a third grade teacher in Washington School, too, a different one.

She was white. She called my father and said, “You have to stop doing her homework. We gave her an essay to write and you wrote it.” He said, “Okay.” He said, “Are you still there? We’ll be over in a minute.” He took me back to school. Everybody was gone. He said, “Give her a piece of paper out of pen.” He said, “Now tell her to write whatever you want to tell her to write. And let’s just see who wrote it.” And she gave me some subject, and I just went and she took it and she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Holmes.” And after that, I knew she didn’t say, “Oh, you’re good at this,” or what. But she was so contrite. She said, “She wrote this?” “Yeah, yeah.” “I’m sorry.” And we never talked about it again. But isn’t it interesting? We went to the same elementary school and we had similar experiences of people who are honoring our gifts and helping our imagination about who we could be to grow. So it’s amazing. Some of these things I haven’t heard before.

Donny Bryant:

It’s fascinating.

Linda Holmes:

The third grade was the third grade, Washington School.

Dr. B:

I’m going to let you get in here, Donny.

Donny Bryant:

Yeah, well, I mean, for me, it’s just fascinating because as you guys were talking about the inspiration and the motivation at third grade, I’m trying to figure out what was going on at that time in third grade. Oh, wow. So my brain is just trying to figure out. So I just think that’s an amazing, obviously, connection. Not only just the family connection, but the school district connection. What do you guys think about that, as you guys reflect now all these years later? How do you make sense of that? How do you make sense of just that cosmic connection, if you will?

Dr. B:

Well, I want to hear what you have to say, Linda, but one of the things that taught me is that we used to say white people who chose to teach primarily in an area where there would be Black children would give to us as much as you could get in your family home. So basically they taught us Latin, to sing Latin Christmas songs. They did not presume we couldn’t do it. They gave us assignments that were right up to par with anybody’s. They didn’t assume we could not do anything. So I mean, there was just a sense of expectation and requirement to be excellent, whether you’re a white student or a Black student. So that’s what I experienced.

Linda Holmes:

Yeah, and I think the thing that I also though remember though about Washington School is the white flight in terms of the students. Because I was looking at my kindergarten picture and I saw the number of white children, and it just kept decreasing. By the time that I was in sixth grade, it was a majority Black school. However, we had an amazing principal, Mr. Romick was an amazing principal. So in the midst of this white flight, there wasn’t this abandoning of the teachers. Do you know what I mean?

Dr. B:

Right, absolutely.

Linda Holmes:

Sometimes when there’s a transition in terms of the makeup of the student body, then the teachers are like, “No, I want to get out of here. I want to go someplace else.” But I think the quality of the principal and the quality of the teachers that were there prior to the white flight who stayed and maintained the Washington School experience, which among the schools in East Orange it was one of the outstanding elementary schools in our four square mile city.

Dr. B:

Right. In our four square mile village.

Linda Holmes:

Yes. Of East Orange. Yeah.

Dr. B:

Well, we’ve reminisced enough. We’ll have to spend some other time catching up. But I want to talk about birthing justice and the role of midwives in the lives of Black women. Most of us are familiar with justice movements with regard to the rights of Black and minority people, but we don’t think of birthing justice. What is birthing justice?

Linda Holmes:

So in the book, I start with the story of my own childbirth experience, and I talk about the fact that I was in my late 20s, and I talk about the fact that I was not far removed from the, we’ll just call it for the moment, the Black Power, but the Black civil rights justice movement, right? And when pregnant, I began to learn a little bit about what was going on in the feminist movement about choice and about having control over our own bodies and having wisdom about the way, whether we wanted to have a lot of medication during the time of birth, who we wanted to have with us during the time of birth, the place of birth, whether we wanted to give birth in the birthing room in a hospital, at a birth center. But this was primarily a movement that was in the white feminist community in the early and mid ’70s.

But when I took my childbirth education classes in a very… I was taking my classes on the upper Lower East Side in New York for some reason because I wanted to find the best childbirth educator in the metropolitan area to take my classes with. And it was Elisabeth Bing who had written books, had been a part of academic studies and whatever. But all of the folks in the class were from the Upper East Side of New York and go… I mean, I was thinking this was about making demands, but for them it’s like, “I have a right to live in wherever I want to live. I have a right to make these choices.” But kind of really challenging the doctor control of the birthing experience and wanting to bring it back into their own hands.

So my daughter’s dad and myself were the only couple of color in the class. And so she would tell us things, very reasonable kinds of things, like, “Don’t allow yourself to be forced to stay in the bed. You want to walk, you want to stay active. If you want a nurse on the delivery room table, you should be able to do that.” So all these kinds of possibilities that I didn’t know anything about. At the time, I was uninsured and I was a single mom. My partner was there, Ghana’s dad was there, my daughter, Ghana’s dad was there, but I was a single mom.

But again, it’s kind of like back to Washington school. But I never felt that that was how I was being viewed in that group. I really felt like this was a campaign. We’re going to change the world. We had the right to make these choices and these decisions. And so at the time, it wasn’t really thinking about infant mortality or thinking about Black mothers dying more often than… Whatever. So I was indigent, I was uninsured, and I gave birth at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Patterson, New Jersey. And so it was kind of like in the civil rights movement and the Black Power Movement, we had our demands. And so I walked into that hospital thinking, “I’m going to make my demands about what I want.”

Dr. B:

You didn’t know that that was not the norm.

Linda Holmes:

Right. Right, because in that class, everyone’s like, “Yeah, this is what’s going to happen.” It wasn’t even questioned that was… So, I quickly learned, very quickly, that I was in a battle. I was literally in a battle for what I considered to be my rights as a mom giving birth. And that again, class with Elisabeth Bing, and so there was even documentation and articles we read. I mean, there was just no doubt in my mind about it. So when I finally gave birth, I told the doctor I wasn’t going to push the baby out until Ghana’s dad was in the delivery room, things like that. That we were told to bring a bottle of champagne with us so we can celebrate the birth while we were having rooming in. And Elisabeth Bing said to us, “The reason to do this really is because the nurses will get to drink this.” Because you’re only going to take a sip of the champagne, right? “The nurses get to drink the champagne afterwards, and so they won’t mind chilling the champagne.” So that was the one thing that did work.

But after that experience, disappointment, I went to get my master’s degree in public administration, but I focused on the right to choose, the right to where do you want to give birth? And also beginning to look a little bit about birthing outcomes. But it wasn’t until I was at the Department of Health, and that, again, this goes back 20 years, that I began to understand about this huge gap in outcomes, that Black mothers were more likely to die in childbirth. It was documented then, coming into the spotlight now, much more likely to die in childbirth, infants much more likely to die in childbirth. And so there were these campaigns that were getting started.

But only recently, only recently in the last few years, and I think Beyonce and the tennis player whose name just went out of my head, who lost her baby at the time… Serena. Women with money, Black women with money, Black middle-class women. Because before it was kind of like, well, if you were poor, you didn’t have access to quality care. But these were women who could have the best doctors, be in the best hospitals and being mistreated and having poor outcomes. That really changed the conversation to we need to be talking about what’s wrong with the system, that the system is unjust in the way that Black women are being treated. The statistics are telling us this, and the stories that we see and that are now being on the front page of the New York Times and Vogue Magazine, kind of just put a completely different lens on the problem.

Donny Bryant:

Linda, let me just jump in real quick because I want you to keep going. But for those of our listeners, including myself, who some of the statistics and the data that you’re talking about when it comes to the disproportionate here, you’re saying to us, because when I hear that sometimes, sometimes the question for me is, “Why? What’s going on?” And then oftentimes, your brain starts to wander and you come up with these ideas that may not be the root cause. But you’re telling me that it’s a systemic problem, that the treatment that there is, and sometimes when you hear that, you’re saying, “Is it intentional? Is it because of ignorance? Is it just because there are cultural norms, there are cultural things that are just not being understood?” Could you elaborate on why there is a systemic problem a little bit more for those of us who may not fully understand why this problem has persisted for generations actually?

Linda Holmes:

Definitely systemic, yeah. And I think the one thing about it is that it’s very, very, very complex. But I will focus on the idea of there is now recognition that there is a need in the medical training curriculum to have courses that focus on the impact of racism in medical care in terms of outcomes. And the most often quoted study was actually done in the State of Virginia at the University of Virginia when they did a study that looked at how pain medicine was being approved or given to patients who said that they were in pain and needed some kind of way to reduce their pain. And this is in the course of childbirth, but it wasn’t necessarily only in childbirth. And in a very structured and scientific research approach, they found out that in fact, the predominantly white doctors in the residency programs believed that Black women had a higher tolerance for pain than white women. And that article has been published, I don’t know if it’s the Journal of Medicine, but published in one of the most renowned journals of medicine in the country.

So the issue of bias, and it’s really not surprising that students who are in medical schools often have gone through the whole pipeline of education without having a lot of interaction with others who are different from them in terms of race and ethnicity. So there’s a lot of assumptions that come from TV and other sources. But to know that when a pregnant mother in labor says, “I’m in pain, I’m uncomfortable,” and the doctor says, “You’ll be okay,” not even trying to understand what is underneath it and that is because there are assumptions made about tolerance of pain or assumptions made that the mother is exaggerating. But a woman who is not Black, who says, “I’m in pain,” this is how they did the comparison, they believed her and they took the appropriate action that was needed in that circumstance.

Dr. B:

Linda, in Boston, there was a similar study recently teaching Boston medical students that African American skin is thicker than white skin. And the way that plays out is that when people have to have injections or blood drawn, and I have had to have that, when I go to a hospital, I have had nurses say to me, “That doesn’t hurt. I mean, you are African American.” And for a while, “What? What does that mean?” But when people are sticking you with needles, that’s not the time to ask them a question or to check them. You just shut up and let it happen. But you know something’s wrong.

But here’s what I want to say to you about how could people in the general population not understand the practices that begin with racism and slavery don’t have those procedures and assumptions built into whatever they do. I mean, midwives began because no one would give healthcare to slaves. No one would help birth babies of slaves. I mean, so speak a little bit about… I don’t know whether it’s, what do you call it, benign ignorance or a lack of understanding that this was rooted in abusive, oppressive, systemic racism?

Linda Holmes:

Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting because in a very bizarre way, there have been some studies that shown that there may have been more value in how care was rendered to enslaved Black women than how care is rendered to Black women today. Because of the money, because of the profit. That they needed a healthy workforce, right? They needed healthy babies to be born to continue to fuel this system of enslavement. And that the doctors, actually, we have doctors on a pedestal but this whole idea of medical education is a relatively new one comparatively speaking. I mean midwives have been with us from the beginning of time, but this whole idea of medical education was even in the ’20s this whole issue of doctors washing their hands was a problem. And I’m talking the 1920s. That what we know, the problems that are existing in medical education now, it’s still a very, very short history.

But midwives were actually very successful caregivers under the circumstances. And it’s somewhat unbelievable in many ways that midwives, when women were poorly nourished, working long hours, that they were able to provide a safe birthing space under the worst circumstances and have a positive outcome. Whereas today, 400 years later, we are still struggling with… The whole argument for getting rid of midwives was the infant mortality rate is too high. And so if we move everybody into the hospital, and if we have these educated medical doctors, then we will reduce the infant mortality gap, right? They will have some equity. But to get back to what was said before, because certainly racism is playing into not just how doctors interact, but where is your hospital? How much money is going in to fund the hospital? Who are the doctors working in the hospital? It’s a very complex system.

And I think with the birthing justice moment, the one thing that I’ve learned from working with the Health Department is it’s a very complicated problem and that there is not an overnight solution to this problem, right? Because infant mortality also is a measure of the community as a whole. It is a measure of access to healthy food. It’s a measure of environment. If you are sick when you get pregnant because of the inequities of your community, then the chances of having an unhealthy childbirth experience… So the birthing justice movement, which I think is much more than healthy mothers, healthy babies, which is how we were talking about it 20 years ago, is looking at the entire community, looking at the issue of racism, looking at the complexity involved in coming up with solutions.

One thing I want to add is that there’s someone in the book who’s a doctor. She gave birth when she was doing a fellowship at the University of Virginia. She was not anticipating having a cesarean section. She was awake and aware, and she wanted to engage in a conversation with her peers. And at some point, she says, “In spite of being an MD, in spite of having this prestigious fellowship, I became a Black woman. And they were no longer listening to me. They were saying, ‘We know what’s best for you,’ but not even willing to have a respectful conversation.” So what happens when someone… I mean, when we go in, I go with my public health background, you go in with your lawyer, whatever, whatever, and then all of a sudden you had to argue about ridiculous…

Dr. B:

Right. It does tend to be annoying. It really is, because then you’re being treated by someone who’s part of a system who’s following the system’s rules. I don’t even think it’s personal really. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s just all of us have been trained white supremacy is throughout the educational systems, the college systems, the medical systems. So fixing it is not easy. You don’t just legislate or pass a few bills and then call it over with. “We have overcome.” Well, you can tell by the issues, whether you’re for or against abortion, that men are still making decisions about women’s bodies. Primarily men. It astounds me really. But what I want to get in here with Donny is you’ve told the birth story and this amazing story about the doctor who encounters racism. And I want to hear from a man’s perspective, because Donny is a dad, a wonderful dad, I might say, very involved dad. So what was your birthing experience? You don’t have to have the baby to have a birthing experience.

Donny Bryant:

Yeah, it’s a great question, Dr. B. I know what I was struggling as I was preparing, Linda, for this interview, because I knew how close you guys were as family. And of course, your book, it’s an amazing book And the interviews were so fascinating. I saw it as a history lesson for me, understanding the role of midwifery within the African American community and how this traces all the way back to Africa and how critical and important it was to the sustainability of the Black family. But as I started thinking about how could I contribute to a conversation about birth, I was a little lost.

But I do have one memory, and I have three wonderful children, and there are unique aspects to each birth. But one that does stand out to me was our second child, Isaiah. And with Isaiah, I remember being at the hospital, and I remember seeing on the monitor, and at the time I worked in the medical device community, and so I understood what was happening, I understood watching the heart rate, but all of a sudden, things are starting to go south, go in a different direction. And I’m observing this and I’m interpreting this, “Something’s not right.” And then all of a sudden, and they’re starting to rotate my wife at the time over back and forth, now no one is saying anything to me. I’m kind of pushed to the side and I am speechless, I’m nervous, and I’m like, “What’s going on? What’s going on?” I’m asking, no one’s addressing it.

And eventually, you can kind of see the monitor starts, the heart rate starts to get a little bit normalized again, and they kind of step back. Camille was crying, and I’m starting to cry because clearly something is wrong. What we find out later was that apparently the umbilical cord was around Isaiah’s neck. And what they were doing, I’m sure everyone besides me knew this, but they were manipulating through the rotating of the mother’s body, trying to loosen the umbilical cord. And I realized in moment how fragile life is. And we were still uncertain if there were going to be any lasting effects, some damage done to our yet unborn son. And thank God he’s healthy, he’s doing great. He’s in first year in college now. But that was a memorable moment for me, and that sticks with me.

So I always have, when I see pregnant women or when individuals are… We celebrate that moment of pregnancy oftentimes, but also recognize that there is this aspect of fragility there. And for me, I’m reminded because of my own experience, and when you do have the gift of a healthy child and a gift of healthy life, and even when things are not so, there’s still a gift in that. And I think we always have to be reminded that life is precious regardless. So that’s just my male perspective. I’ve learned to kind of don’t ask questions, I’m just there. I’m the supporting cast. I’m not giving any recommendations. I’m the punching bag if needed be. That’s my role, just to be the punching bag in that room, but yeah. So yeah, that’s-

Dr. B:

To be whatever help is needed.

Donny Bryant:

Whatever help is needed.

Dr. B:

That’s right. That’s right.

Linda Holmes:

I think it’s wonderful that you were there. And I think in terms of the birthing justice and midwives, and I did a talk just this a week, because birthing can be complicated. So to romanticize and say, every mom should have a midwife, having the choice to have a birth at home, but every mom, that’s probably not the best place for her to have birth. And so I think when you’re in the birthing space, I think it’s also very important to deal with the reality of being sensitive to the caregivers and respectful to the caregivers. Because the last thing that you want to happen is for the focus to shift away from caring for the mom and caring for the baby and having a positive outcome.

And then by the same token, we want the medical education curriculum to include why it’s important to have conversation with whoever happens to be present, not during the crisis, but maybe afterwards. Being comfortable with saying, “If you would like to ask me some questions about this, maybe a little bit later, let’s step outside. I’ll be happy to talk to you about it.” Because that’s something that doctors are learning how to do now. Because in the past, doctors and nurses had those conversations, but they weren’t expected to have those conversations with those who might be surrounding the mother and supporting the mother. So I think you are to be respected because there’s all kinds of ways you could have responded, but you knew your place at that point was to be this tower of strength and comfort and emotion to keep the peace in the room for those healthcare providers to do the work that they needed to do at that critical moment.

Donny Bryant:

Wow. Well, you’re going to make me cry, so I’m going to turn off the [inaudible 00:48:03] no.

Dr. B:

I love you, Donny.

Donny Bryant:

No.

Dr. B:

Such a kind and sensitive person. Linda, you’ve just recently found out, did you say, was it in the book that you had a midwife in your family you didn’t know about?

Linda Holmes:

Oh, yeah.

Dr. B:

Tell us about that.

Linda Holmes:

Yeah. Well, she’s on the Holmes side of the family.

Dr. B:

Okay. Of course. That Geechee side.

Linda Holmes:

Yes, yes. I think that what happened with this campaign to move babies and birth into hospitals, that there was this campaign that kind of… I was talking about not categorizing all doctors, all nurses the same way, but there was this campaign that stereotyped midwives as being last choice and not having the kind of education and so forth. But doing this book, I’ve talked to so many moms and families who had wonderful midwives who probably attended some classes. Tuskegee, for example, had an excellent program for the granny midwives, but that was the only one in the state. You had to get to Tuskegee to do that. But a lot of them also had great respect in their communities.

Chester Higgins is a wonderful photographer. His aunt was a midwife. He said when she walked into the church, everyone stood up. When I talked to someone else who there was another person, she was a midwife, and she was also a school teacher and a school principal, so then she had this relationship, some of the mothers who she attended in birth ended up being her children in the classroom. Or the mother might’ve been… You know what I’m saying? So that they were very connected to the community in all kinds of ways.

So I’ve been encouraging people to find out, “Was there a midwife in your family? Was your grandmother delivered by a midwife?” And there’s still a last generation out there. This is kind of a last generation. In the South, there are many people who came into the world and they are alive today to tell their stories, millions of people who came through the hands of a midwife. So in my book, the book was pretty much done, and I was kind of thinking, well, one of the things I wanted to do is say, “Find out about your story,” or whatever, whatever, “Was there a midwife in your family? Was anybody your family delivered by them?” And then I thought, “Well, I don’t know about my own family.” So that’s what led me to contact someone who still had close relationships with Edgefield.

But you can actually through Ancestry.com there’s a way, and I don’t quite know how to do it myself, but you put in the name of the town, and there’s some of the birth certificates will have midwife on it. Here in Virginia, they just did a new looking at the free Negroes before the end of the Civil War, because in Virginia, if you were emancipated, you had a year either you had to leave, and that’s fed back to Liberia kind of movement, but they kept a record. You had to report yourself to the courthouse to say that you’re free, you’ve been emancipated. And you identified yourself. And so there are now these records in Virginia where you can go to the county and find the name of someone. You know where you were born, the name of that person. And they had to identify whether they were a basket weaver, a farmer, or a midwife. And so many of those emancipated independent women on the list, the incomplete list that I’ve seen, list themselves as midwives. Because oftentimes, even in the era of enslavement, many of those midwives were free women. S.

O it’s something not to be ashamed of. It’s something to be proud of. So I was real excited to find that in our own family, and I haven’t been able to dig much deeper into it. And she was kind of towards the end of the era of midwifery practices, 1920s into the ’30s. But I recommend people taking the time to ask their grandmother, “Where did you give birth? Was there a midwife in the family? Who was midwifery of the community?” I curated an exhibition at the Anacostia Museum years ago, and there are people that… It was about midwives, there’s a small exhibition at the Smithsonian now on midwives that I contributed to. But those exhibitions are bringing into the light of day midwife stories to be celebrated as opposed to be ashamed of, like being ashamed that you weren’t born in the hospital, being ashamed about that you couldn’t get a doctor.

Dr. B:

Your work is also in the African American Museum too, isn’t it?

Linda Holmes:

Yes, yes, yes.

Dr. B:

Amazing. Oh, you just mentioned like, “Oh, I’m in the Smithsonian.” Like it’s just an ordinary thing. That’s not an ordinary thing. I mean, it’s amazing. But I’m one of those people that wouldn’t be here if it were not for a midwife, according to the story my parents would tell me, is that my mother’s water didn’t break. And her doctor was an old country doctor, and he would come to the hospital to see her and say, “She’ll be all right. She’ll be all right.” And day and day after went on and on, and my grandmother came up there and took a look at what was going on and went back home.

And the next thing you knew, a woman no one had ever seen, in the evening, walked into my mother’s room. She wasn’t a nurse, she wasn’t in uniform, and she broke my mother’s water. She left the room and said, “Something’s happening in there. Something’s happening.” And she left. Nobody ever knew who she was. But when I came out, I was blue, oxygen deprived. Maybe that explains everything else. But the story was my grandmother went home, called one of her midwife friends and said, “Get up there and deliver that baby.” And all she did was just cut the water and I was born. And there are lots of stories like that where if it’s not for the people, the ancestors that brought you through… We’re standing on the shoulders of amazing people.

Linda Holmes:

Yes.

Dr. B:

I want to ask you about mysticism because you were talking about the ways in which Aunt Lee was imparting into me a lot of things that are still with me now. And the other mystic in our family who’s even more tied than I am, because I squashed a lot of it with academia, I didn’t want to do all that oogie boogie stuff. I wanted to teach. And I’m a nerd. But my sister Mildred, oh my goodness, she’s got daily conversations with the ancestors. So between the two of us, we were really infused with mysticism. And I bring that up because for most African diaspora contexts mysticism is found around the portals of death and birth.

Linda Holmes:

Mm-hmm.

Dr. B:

Were there any of the things that your co-author, Margaret Smith had happen or you recognized as mystical occurrences around the issues of birth and death?

Linda Holmes:

Well, first of all, there’s the call, right? The midwives talked about the call to practice. So I would say to them, “Why did you become a midwife?” When I was in Alabama. And it would be, “I had a dream.” It might be more than once, many times, “I got sick and couldn’t get well. And the only way that I could get well was to accept this call that I had to practice as a midwife.” Because many of they would talk about, “I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to do something else. But there was this spiritual call.”

And then also the continent, also, the idea of they were the ones that first spoke to the infant so that they would whisper into… And they never really said what they were whispering, but because it was not translated, it was kind of like it would be something that was very ancient that was passed on to them that was part of a ritual to be whispered to the infant at the time of birth. And that the whole idea of a returning of an ancestor, right? The birth is the returning of an ancestor. So even with the naming idea, some of that was influencing how a child or how the newborn was named because of this returning of the ancestor. But this whole idea of birth being connected in this circle idea.

Donny Bryant:

Linda, I find it fascinating that you reference the mystical experience of the call because it’s very, particularly in the African American preaching tradition, the concept of the call to ministry. It’s not just a call to pastor a church, but it’s a mystical experience between the individual and the divine. And like you said, it’s often resisted. In many of the stories, there’s this resistance but an ultimate surrender. It’s almost like you have no choice. And I love the way you made that correlation with the mystical experience.

But I really wanted you to elaborate more, because I remember in chapter seven in your book, you talk about the rituals, and you were referencing the ritual of the whisper, which I just find that just to be so fascinating. But there are other rituals that you discussed in there. You talk about the burial of the placenta. I think you talk about massages. And then there’s something about the practice of a prayer in the birthing experience. Could you elaborate for our listeners a little bit more on how these ancient rituals will often continue to be even practiced today? Because I do remember somehow how, maybe it was with my grandparents or with my mother, this idea of massaging the baby, and I just thought that’s what you did, that’s what everybody did. But wow, I mean, I find it fascinating. So could you elaborate a little bit more, Linda, about that [crosstalk 00:58:57].

Linda Holmes:

So where did your grandparents live?

Donny Bryant:

So-

Linda Holmes:

Switching around a little there. I’m asking you a question.

Donny Bryant:

Yeah, no, Tennessee. So there is this tradition, and I was sharing with Barbara before the call, that there is a story about the Bryants going all the way back to the 1700s, particularly 1800s, Sherrod Bryant, and this can be Googled, he was a free Black man, and he was the wealthiest free Black man in the Nashville area. And I did the ancestry and I have all the census records all the way going back to the beginning of the census and even before that, property records. And it was fascinating to be able to paint a picture and to find a sense of ancestry and connection through that.

And so Tennessee, I would say, and Kentucky, just on the other side, Allensville just on the other side, because as you know, that was a border between the Union and the Confederacy. And so there’s this kind of migration from Nashville to Kentucky, that’s on my grandfather’s side. On my grandmother’s side, they go back to West Virginia. I think it’s Bluefield of West Virginia, right in the coal mines, in that area. My great grandfather was a coal miner there. And so there’s some great stories going back to that way in that part of the country.

Linda Holmes:

I have do remember what the question is.

Donny Bryant:

Yeah, I wanted you to elaborate on the rituals because you spoke to us about the whisper. And I think for our listening audience, there’s some great wisdom there. But there are other rituals, I think, that are even still practiced today that I really wanted you to try to make those connections for our listeners for.

Linda Holmes:

Right. So you mentioned the burial of the afterbirth following birth and the importance of that. And it was something that when I was in Alabama, because I grew up in New Jersey, so the idea of keeping the afterbirth and burying it in the ground just seemed like a completely foreign, crazy concept. And when you have a baby in the hospital, they’re tossed away. But seeing it as more as the afterlife, the source of life, that the afterbirth is a source of life. But when I was in Ghana, I had someone to kind of reenact the ritual of the burial of the afterbirth, and they actually had a special clay pot, which they would prepare with something soft like grass or whatever.

In Alabama, they talked about cotton. But seeing this as life, the afterbirth is life. And that the afterbirth would then, in a ceremonial way, be prepared to be buried a certain number of feet, you know like six feet under. But what really struck me about all this when I was there on the continent was when I was standing on the ground and I thought, “I am standing on the ground of the afterbirth of folks from the beginning of time in the soil.”

Dr. B:

Wow.

Linda Holmes:

And that was just a moment. There was a few moments, but that was one of the moments that happened when I was there to understand where I was standing, not just standing on ground, but I was standing on the ancestral spirits of my ancestors.

Dr. B:

Wow, that’s amazing.

Donny Bryant:

Wow.

Linda Holmes:

But the thing that was also not known to me when I was in Alabama in 1981 is that most of the midwives that I talked to, they weren’t still doing it, most of them were very familiar with the practice of burying the afterbirth. And it was very, very common. And it was seen as a part of life and that you continue to treat this as life and that to not honor the life in the afterbirth, because this is what fed before birth. But the spiritual aspect of it was extremely real for these women just in 1981, right? And I think the other thing to understand about many of these rituals, these are timeless rituals, but time begins on the continent of Africa, right?

Dr. B:

Absolutely.

Linda Holmes:

And so these practices that are timeless begin with the beginning of time. Some of them begin with the beginning of time. Using alternative birthing positions is another one. We see them on the pyramid walls in Egypt using upright birthing positions from the beginning of time and midwives up until the 19th century in Europe, but Indigenous midwives, right? Colonial European midwives before the creation… In North New Jersey, Barbara-

Dr. B:

Yes?

Linda Holmes:

In North New Jersey, next door to East Orange where we grew up, there was a study done in the 1920s looking at the outcomes of immigrant midwives from Italy, France, Ireland, whatever, and comparing them with doctor outcomes. And what they found, whether they were born in the hospital or out of the hospital, just comparing the outcomes, it was published in the Journal of Public Health, a doctor’s edited journal that showed that the midwives in Newark had better outcomes, European midwives, than the doctors in the 1920s. So a lot of complications with hospital birth, being over-drugged, inappropriate use of technology, not being treated in a humane way.

But the traditions, I think one of the most… And I’m going to stop here with the answer to the wonderful question that was just asked. I think one of the most important things that came out of the work that I did is that to really honor the midwives who preserved our African traditions, that is what called me, my call, to do this book, to honor the fact that in spite of the Middle Passage, in spite of enslavement, in spite of Jim Crow, in spite of what we’re going through now, but in spite of all of that, these women, and they didn’t say, “I’m doing this because I want to preserve my ancestries.” They did it because, “This is what my mother did. This is what my grandmother did, and this is what my great-grandmother did.” They didn’t say that, “We did it because it’s African.” They said that, “It’s what my grandmother…” And they sustained those traditions up uninterrupted in Alabama and across the South up until the 1980s. If we want to count time in Florida, these women held on to these women-sustained traditions and for good reason. They had positive outcomes.

Dr. B:

Right. I’m going to end this first part of our conversation with what you were just talking about, the ways in which communities sustain one another. Because Linda, I’m afraid this is going to be a two-parter. If you’ll so kind as to allow us to add a date coming up soon to do part two so that we can really explore. This is far too much for one session. But what you ended up with is community coming through the generations. And I’m reminded of Malidoma Some’s work, Of Water and Of Spirit, where he talks about community as part of the birthing process. We began by talking about community in our family house. And what Malidoma Some says is when you are born in his village, when the baby first cries out, all the children cry back. And he says, “What must it be like to enter the world, cry and have no answer?” Thank you, Linda, for an amazing conversation. And for your amazing contributions, Donny.

Donny Bryant:

Thank you, Linda.

Dr. B:

Part two coming up.

Linda Holmes:

Thanks so much, Donny. Thanks so much, Barbara.

Donny Bryant:

Thank you, Linda.

Linda Holmes:

I’m glad our conversation actually happened. Yay.

Dr. B:

Thank you so much.

Linda Holmes:

All right, thank you. Thank you.

Donny Bryant:

So Linda, I know that you have a history in public health, but what got you interested in Black midwives?

Linda Holmes:

Actually, what got me interested in Black midwives was my own childhood experience, which I do write about in my book, Safe in a Midwife’s Hands. I was disappointed, I had taken childbirth education classes, I had done a lot of reading. And for the sake of understanding where the women’s movement was at that time, I’m talking about 1978, and so we’re just beginning to see this idea of choice and women wanting to take control their own birth experiences. So I went into the birthing space with the idea of wanting to be able to be awake and aware, having an opportunity to be mobile as long as possible, having my partner with me throughout the birthing experience and in the birthing space.

And shortly after arriving at the hospital, a completely different scenario began to unfold. And happily, I had a very positive birthing outcome in terms of my daughter. This again was 48 years ago. I was able to nurse on the table, breastfeed on the table, which was unusual at the time. I was able to have her dad with me at the time, which was also unusual. But it was a battle. And my reading continued to inform me after that event that many of the things that I wanted in my birth experience were at the core of the practices of midwives, providing support, providing comfort, and respecting a woman’s decisions about what she wanted in the birth experience in terms of not having unnecessary interventions. And so that was my wake-up call, so to speak. And I was fortunate enough, maybe two years after my daughter was born, to land a job with a nurse midwife program at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. And that was the beginning of what led to the book that came out 48 years later.

Donny Bryant:

Wow. This is kind of me, Linda, really thinking about as you talked about 48 years, I shouldn’t tell my age, but I’m 49 right now, and just to imagine what that was like. And it’s just fascinating to me. I do want to end with this question here. Tell us about your book and the connections between African and diasporan midwives.

Linda Holmes:

Just to up a little bit. When I was working with the nurse midwives program, I became very aware of the fact that the American College of Nurse-Midwives essentially was respecting and documenting and wanting nurse midwives to know the history of nurse midwifery in this country. And essentially it begins with Appalachia and the horseback riding midwives from England, that model of care. But the stories of Indigenous midwives, immigrant midwives, Black midwives, were left out of that first story around midwifery. And I, having a lifetime of interest in Black history, began to explore the why not of that, which led me to do some oral histories in the South with Black midwives who had been practicing essentially 400 years, since the beginning of the arrival of Africans in this countries.

And when I interviewed them, one of the things I learned about were some traditions and practices that were very different, but sometimes connected to the practices of nurse midwives. But these practices were being thought about as superstition or non-scientific, not fitting into the medical model. And it was one of the reasons that it was argued that Black midwives should not continue, these granny midwives, these historical midwives who had passed on their practice with generation after generation, should not continue. And I began thinking about what these traditions and rituals, where do they come from? And I started talking to midwives who had practiced in Africa. And some of the rituals and some of the traditions that I was describing, they said, “That’s what happens in birthing experiences in Ghana,” or, “That’s what happens in a birthing experience in Kenya.” So it really wasn’t until quite recently that I was able to go to Africa and interview traditional midwife there and ask about their traditions and their rituals and finding amazing connections.

Donny Bryant:

Wow. I know that you and Dr. B grew up in the same house, if you don’t mind, share with us some of your memories of that time.

Linda Holmes:

So Barbara, yes, we had that shared growing up experience from a very, very early age. Our dads were brothers and they were very, very close in age, as you know. They were so close in that when my dad and your dad were being registered to go to school back decades and decades ago, my dad said he wanted to be in the same class as his brother. And fortunately, our grandmother, of course the principal said, “No way, you’re kindergarten, he’s first grade,” but the principal said, “No, you can’t do that,” but our grandmother stood up for the two boys and said, “No, they need to be together.” And they were together in kindergarten through high school in the same class, graduated from high school the same year.

Moving forward, they both were in the military, they were both in the Army, and they decided to explore the possibility of taking advantage of the GI Bill. And Barbara, as a result of that, they created what we now think about as our family village. It was a six family apartment building. So there was an apartment that my grandmother lived in. Of course there was our family, your family, and Aunt Leola was there as well. So the majority of the apartments in this six family apartment building were occupied by family members.

So memories include the fact that I guess every door was an open door. When you went out to play, you were waving at a cousin, you were waving at an aunt, you were waving at an uncle. And one memory I just am recalling now is that my Aunt Lee used to do this kind of little summer camp program and it would be all of the cousins coming together. And she would work with us for about a week and we’d maybe do a poem or song or whatever, but then we’d have this big show. But it was the big family show. So it was all of us coming together as cousins and your dad, my dad, just coming together as a family. So much so that I don’t really remember much about our neighbors or much of many memories about the community in general. But having strong memories of the backyard, the being able to have every door in the apartment open to us and really feeling very protected and very free and very secure.

Donny Bryant:

Wow. All right, Linda, I’m going to ask one more question that wasn’t in our list, okay? I just got some information that your book is up for the Museum of African American History, the Stone Book Award. I would like to invite you to share a little bit about this esteemed honor and what this experience has been like for you.

Linda Holmes:

So this is my second book about midwives. My first book was Listen to Me Good, which I did co-author with a traditional African American midwife in Alabama who had a third grade education who one day told me, I asked her, “Is there anything I can do for you?” And she said, “Yes, write a book about me.” And so that’s how that book was born. But this book really comes out of my wanting to connect the traditions that Black women sustained in spite of the Middle Passage, in spite of enslavement, in spite of Jim Crow, in spite of being mocked, in spite of not being respected for 400 years. And so going to the continent was almost like a pilgrimage, so to speak. And I went there to interview the midwives about the traditions.But I began with saying that I had interviewed Black midwives in the United States who had continued many of the practices that I’d read about at that point that are being sustained by midwives here.

That’s when the water gathered in my eyes and in their eyes. And I wasn’t really expecting that when I was planning my travel. Because for them they said they never imagined that it would be possible to receive a message from generations, generations, generations after the Middle Passage saying that these were women who were still sustaining some of the traditions of their ancestors. A couple of examples, the burial of the afterbirth. Another example, using alternative birthing positions. Another example, naming ceremony. And so that’s what my book is about. It’s a book of stories. It’s not in the anthropology or the history or whatever, but it’s really about bringing the voices of these women into the world and seeing the connections with the birthing justice movement, seeing the connections with what women are wanting and seeking and birthing here today. And I was amazed by the company that I was keeping in being honored for this book. Totally unexpected. But I really feel that the honor is really a collective one that I share with the voices of the women who told me their stories, both in Alabama and in the continent.

Donny Bryant:

As a male who really doesn’t oftentimes a lot of experience with the birthing traditions and just the birthing process, the genius behind your work from my interpretation and perspective is that it’s really African American history. You’re really giving us an insight. The benefit of midwives is connected to the ongoing of African American history. And that’s really what I’ve started to see. And I didn’t see this before. I was aloof to this. And it’s like without midwives, there is no African American history in America. And I think that’s critical to this. That’s what we need to understand from your work is that… So when I think about African American history, I should also think about midwives. And to me, I don’t think I had that understanding prior to this. And so I appreciate what you bring. And so now when I hear the word midwives, I automatically think African American history and the traditions that come along with that. So thank you.

Thanks for listening. We’d like to leave you with a few reflections from our interview with Linda Holmes.

Dr. B:

You know, this was very special for me because she’s my first cousin. And I have to admit that I had so much fun in this interview, probably too much fun. Boy, is it going to give the editors a lot of work because we hadn’t caught up with each other for years. I have known of her work, I’ve read her work and we’ve texted back and forth. But to be able to hear her talk about her own experiences, many of which I did not know, particularly around birthing, and to hear what she went through in the process and how that led her to connect her work in public health to the continent of Africa, it was such a gift to both of us. So I hope the audience enjoyed it as much as I did and as much as Linda did.

Donny Bryant:

Well, Dr. B, I would say the conversation about birthing justice and making the connection with systemic racism was really eye-opening for me as a male, as someone who really did not have insight into some of these issues, it allowed me to be more sensitive and to recognize the importance of the gift of midwifery and the presence of midwives in our community and the historical gift that the role of midwives have played within the African American community. It was like a history lesson for me.

Dr. B:

Me too.

Donny Bryant:

Yeah..And even metaphorically speaking, as we extrapolate this concept of birthing, looking at birthing as a metaphor of bringing forth new beginnings and new life. And so Dr. B, it was a gift to be able to see you and your family member reflect on your childhood, but also was an even deeper gift to be able to learn something more significant about how the role of birthing justice and systemic racism, how that has played out in the history of the Black community within America.

We’d like to invite our listeners to examine your own biases or blind spots when it comes to healthcare. Where might you have unconscious assumptions about race, gender, or even socioeconomic status? And how can you change those assumptions? How can you challenge those assumptions? Thank you for listening.