Looks like one of the Washington sisters—Fredi is on the left and Isabelle is on the right. They were both multi-hyphenates—actresses, dancers, activists, and Race Women. Both were Cotton Club dancers and #Gullah #Geechees from #Savannah, GA.

Thank you to the researchers, scientists, historians, and Dr. Bonaparte for their work, which I used to compile this thread.

Sources:

time.com/6727306/blac...

youtu.be/SE34K88LUek?...

ir.vanderbilt.edu/items/720085...

musc.libguides.com/c.php?g=7870...

By shifting births from homes to hospitals and redefined pregnancy as a medical condition—rather than a natural process—the “medicalization of childbirth” exploited existing social biases against women, immigrants, and people of color like South Carolina’s granny midwives. #HiddenHistory

Evidence from the period showed midwife-attended births often had better outcomes than hospital births, where procedures like forceps delivery could cause injury.

Between 1900 and 1940, the majority of birthworkers in the state were Black and called “granny midwives” or “grand midwives.” The medical establishment’s smear campaigns against midwives portrayed traditional birthworkers as untrained, unhygienic, and a threat to maternal and infant health.

Abrogation is the act of canceling, nullifying, or repealing something, almost always in an official or legal context. This happened across the U.S., but in South Carolina, it disproportionately affected African-American women.

In “The Persecution and Prosecution of Granny Midwives in South Carolina, 1900-1940,” medical sociologist Alicia D. Bonaparte, PhD, referred to the concerted effort by doctors to take over the field of childbirth from midwives as abrogation.

Midwives charged significantly lower fees, which gave them a competitive advantage, especially among lower-income families who were a large portion of their clientele. My grandmother Anna Smith was a #Gullah #Geechee midwife/rootworker in Georgetown, S.C.

Black folks often didn’t have access to hospitals and physicians due to means and location and, if accessed, subjected to racism, discrimination, and substandard care in segregated facilities, obtaining care from trusted members of the community as granny midwives instead was vital.

For African American communities in the South in the late 1800s and well into the 20th Century, #midwives were trusted and well-respected health lcare practitioners that were relied upon for general healing for the family as well as for providing maternal and infant care during labor and delivery.

Prior to the intervention of physicians and hospitals, most women delivered unassisted or assisted by a relative or a #midwife. That changed in the early 20th century when physicians sought to gain a monopoly on the profitable field of #obstetrics.

Learn more about the Gullah language from Sunn M’Cheaux, who is Harvard University’s first and only Gullah language instructor, Bubba Sunn teaches a curriculum based on extensive research and his own personal Gullah/Geechee knowledge and experience.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Gullah has survived centuries and given birth to Afro-Seminole Creole, the Gullah dialect, & donated words that are commonly used in standard American English. The Gullah dialect is still spoken throughout the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor that runs along the coast of NC,SC, GA, & FL.

By eradicating the language of the oppressed, colonizers could dismantle their identity, weaken their resistance, and force assimilation. That didn’t work so well with Gullah Geechee, who despite the horrors of enslavement and Jim Crow, maintained our culture and language.

But why did Europeans suppress the language of those they oppressed—like the African ancestors of the Gullah Geechee? It was a calculated strategy to dismantle the cultures under their thumb, consolidate political & economic power, & demoralize people.

When I call Gullah a creole, I’m using the linguistics definition of the word, which is when 2 or more languages are combined to create a new complete one with its own grammar and vocabulary that lasts more than a generation and becomes the first language of a community.

Gullah, or Geechee, is the oldest English-based creole spoken in the U.S. It is a gumbo of English & African languages, with a smattering of words from Arabic, French, & languages spoken by the indigenous peoples of southeastern coastal U.S.