History of Midwifery

This is a snippet of an article published in the washington post about granny midwives...the article is titled "The Midwife's Art, Born of Necessity" and is about an exhibit at the Smithsonian's Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture. I believe the exhibit is up until August of 2006.

"I remember my great-grandmother, too," says Nobel Prize-winning
author Toni Morrison in a printed interview within the exhibit. "Her
husband died before I was born, but I remember that whenever my
great-grandmother walked into ! a room, her grandsons and her nephews
stood up. The women in her family were very, very articulate. Of
course, my great-grandmother could not read, but she was a midwife and
people from all over the state came to her for advice and for her to
deliver babies. They came for other kinds of medical care, too. Yes, I
feel the authority of those women more than I do my own."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/17/AR2006031700470_2.html