Black Women’s Maternal Labor
Lessons from Fannie Lou Hamer in the Wake of Roe v. Wade
By Nicole Carr
This piece is a part of our Spark Series Reproductive Justice as a Human Right
In 1966, Mississippi healthcare officials refused to admit Dorothy Jean Hamer Hall after she began hemorrhaging following her second child’s birth. Race, gender, and class complicated her access to healthcare. In the 1960s, state sanctioned reproductive violence against Black people was so prevalent that even if admitted, Dorothy, a poor 22 year-old Black woman, would have likely received inadequate healthcare. Five years earlier, Dorothy’s mother, Fannie Lou Hamer, had been forcibly sterilized. Citing the frequency of forced hysterectomies in Mississippi during the 1960s, Hamer called the procedure a “Mississippi appendectomy.” Although she never had biological children and suffered two stillborn births, Hamer and her husband adopted two girls. In caring for children not her own in the biological sense, Hamer epitomizes Patricia Hill-Collins definition of an “othermother.” Frequently serving as primary caregiver to children impacted by state sponsored poverty, the “othermother” cannot be fully appreciated without first understanding it as response to white supremacist attacks on Black women’s reproductive rights, caregiving, and economic inequalities. In the wake of slavery and Jim Crow Era segregation, Black women, tasked with sustaining the lifeblood of the community itself, birthed othermothering. Hamer’s adoption of her daughter following a hot water accident that left the girl badly burned and her adoption of a young, unmarried girl highlight Black mothering as revolutionary praxis.
Perhaps most well-known for defying Black voter disenfranchisement in the Deep South, Hamer’s fight for reproductive justice shifts motherhood away from biological status towards laboring for a better world. As Black Feminist scholar Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, “What would it mean for us to take the word “mother” less as a gendered identity and more as a possible action, a technology of transformation that those people who do the most mothering labor are teaching us right now?” As states react to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, Hamer’s relentless battle to secure reproductive rights for her daughter, herself, and the wider Mississippi community, serves as a blueprint for mitigating the ruling’s disastrous impact on Black women and marginalized birthing people. Indeed, when healthcare providers refused to treat Dorothy due to her familial ties to Hamer, the mother and activist drove from Mississippi to Memphis. Dorothy did not survive the drive. Hamer’s heartbreaking account of Dorothy’s death confirms the lethality of discriminatory healthcare, “We couldn’t get a doctor to attend my daughter and she died as we were driving her 127 miles to Memphis.”
In the 57 years since Dorothy’s death, reproductive injustice continues to disproportionately impact Black women and Native American and Alaskan mothers. Black women in the United States are more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than women in any other race group, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families. Sustained exposure to stress and race-based trauma means Black women produce about 15% more cortisol than white women, increasing risks for pregnancy complications. These troubling statistics highlight the deadly web racism weaves in Black women’s lives.
As reproductive scholar Dana Ain Davis explains, obstetric racism is the pattern by which Black women experience healthcare professionals “being neglectful, dismissive, or disrespectful; causing pain; and engaging in medical abuse through coercion to perform procedures or performing procedures without consent.” Black women’s prolonged exposure to racial stressors, economic disparities, and gender based exploitation contributes to higher abortion rates. President and CEO of the Black Women’s Health Imperative Linda Goler Blount anticipates a rise in Black maternal mortality rates by 30% now that more Black women will be forced to carry their pregnancies to full term. These factors may lead to increases in morbidity, the suffering caused by a disease or medical condition. Since Black women often serve as both primary caregivers and head of households, disability and illness considerably impedes their ability to financially provide for their families.
Doula and Vice President of the San Antonio Black Doula Collective Deanna Vonbartheld is sounding the alarm. “Before, abortion doulas could go to appointments with their patient, learn about their stories, and any medical contradictions that would put that person in harm’s way. They could guide them through the end of the process. Now they can only give them a list of resources outside the state,” Vonbartheld said. Black Texans are especially at risk, as they have consistently had the highest rates of abortion in the state. Complicating matters, Texas has enacted one of the nation’s strictest abortion laws, Senate Bill 8. Also known as the “Heartbeat Bill,” the measure effectively bans abortion procedures as early as six weeks. Reproductive health advocates are already witnessing the abortion ban’s impact on Black women’s mental health. Kay Matthews, founder of the Houston based The Shades of Blue Project, noted: “It seems like everything is falling apart and just our basic rights to make our own decisions about our bodies are now being taken away from us. It’s hard, and folks are struggling.” Because mothers assisted by doulas are less likely to require a cesarean delivery, use pain medication, experience shorter labor, Vonbartheld said that “doulas are needed now more than ever.”
In February, the San Antonio Black Doula Collective hosted a meet and greet at the Carver Branch Library, located in the city’s historically Black East Side district. “Sharing this knowledge is necessary,” Vonbartheld said, “because there is still that question of what does a doula do?” Clients express surprise upon learning doula services range from fertility, bereavement, miscarriage, and post-natal support, Vonbartheld said. Doula and Labor and Delivery nurse Happy Megie hopes these events will dispel myths about midwifery and doula care as too expensive. “Community based doulas frequently serve the community at a low cost or free of charge to communities that can’t afford them,” she said. In April, the San Antonio Black Doula Collective hosted a community baby shower. The free event provided baskets filled with infant bottles, diapers, and informational journals.
This kind of creative mothering has roots in the free healthcare clinics and breakfast programs spurred by Black women in the Black Panther Party. In 1969, the BPP launched Peoples Free Medical Clinics where patients received childhood vaccinations and screenings for lead poisoning, high blood pressure, tuberculosis, and diabetes. As BPP member and health activist Cleo Silvers asserts, “The issue of free quality preventive health care for all is a key element of life for everybody.” In the same year that the BPP offered free healthcare clinics, Hamer labored on behalf of impoverished Black farmworkers in Mississippi. Founding the Freedom Farm Collective, Hamer purchased 40 acres of land for over 1500 families. Hamer’s co-op also purchased 40 pigs. For years, the families survived off the “pig bank.” Hamer’s collectivist approach parallels Black doulas’ insistence that each member within the community is responsible for others. At the library event, doula Asia Thomas encouraged the audience to “connect hands.” “Even if you’re past having children or you’re not in the mother baby world. You’re still a part of the community at large. It’s your responsibility to help change these numbers at hospitals where mothers and babies are dying,” she said. Her call to action underscores maternal labor’s boundless possibilities.
In 1964, Hamer’s effective grassroots organizing no doubt contributed to the Mississippi’s legislature’s failure to pass the 1964 “Genocide Bill.” Joining with the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee, Hamer denounced the law’s attempt to make the birth of a second illegitimate child punishable by sterilization or imprisonment. Hamer circulated a pamphlet rebuking the bill as an attempt to “cut down the rise of illegitimate children on the welfare rolls and force many Negroes to leave the state.” In this post Roe v. Wade landscape, doulas have also entered the political fray. Increasingly uncertain about their role amidst calls for governmental regulation, doulas fear that Texas’ renewed interest in collecting data could be a veiled attempt to limit doula services. “Now we’re asking, how can we protect ourselves in this republican red state? With all these regulations come restrictions and some people don’t want to do the work anymore,” Vonbartheld said. Partnering with doulas to create the Texas Doula Association, Vonbartheld advocates for legislation providing doula services for families on Medicaid.
As the draconian rollbacks to reproductive rights, shrinking governmental assistance, and rising housing costs confirm, justice hinges on “motherwork.” “Work for the day to come is motherwork, whether it is on behalf of one’s own biological children, or for the children of one’s own racial ethnic community, or to preserve the earth for those children who are yet unborn,” Patricia Hill-Collins explains. But this better world will not appear if we do not labor for it. The motherwork continues.
Dr. Nicole Carr is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M San Antonio. Her areas of expertise include African American Literature and History from the 19th century to present, gender within rap and hip hop, Pop Culture, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Black Feminisms, Black Reproductive Justice, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
