Honoring a midwife
Stevenson delivered hundreds of babies, including her own grandchildren
Iwas born at home, as were eight of my siblings. There were 12 children born to my parents, the late McCurtain and Lucille Finley and I was the 10th, born in 1963. For nine of my mother's deliveries, she was tended to and assisted by the same midwife, Roberta Stevenson.
According to the National Black Midwives Alliance, "The legacy of black Midwifery in the US … has roots that can be traced back to West Africa. Religious and medical practices were steeped in the traditions of West African culture vis-a-vis childbirth. It was customary for delivery to occur with the woman squatting on the ground, surrounded by sisters and female relatives, some of whom functioned as midwives.” Delivering not only Black, but also white children was a task forced on Black women during the times of slavery in the US. Oftentimes, Black women were not only required to help the wives of their slaveowners give birth, but also to nurse their slaveowner's infants with milk that should have been reserved for their own newborns.
Once slavery was abolished in the United States, through well past the years of the Civil Rights Movement, Black midwives were the main resources Black families had for assistance with childbirth, as many white doctors would not assist
them, and even what were considered “Black hospitals” were not close enough to the rural areas where many Black people lived.
Roberta Stevenson, or “Mrs. Teevie”, as most Black citizens in the rural communities of Woodford, Milo, Gene Autry, and Springer called her, delivered hundreds of infants, including 25 of her own grandchildren! I had the privilege of interviewing her 85-year-old daughter, Esterine Scott, for this tribute. Scott is now the only living relative in Stevenson's immediate family.
“Momma started being a midwife before I was born and I was born in 1936; she stopped when she was around 76, I believe,” Scott said. “She delivered all of my kids except the last two. They were born in hospitals.”
When asked if race played a part in why white doctors did not come to her community to deliver babies, Mrs. Scott said no, not where she grew up, because she remembers a white doctor who lived in Woodford when they were growing up, and he did come when people got sick, “but Momma delivered the babies because it was cheaper, and she lived closer. Sometimes she would even stay with the mothers for a few days, cook, and clean and do things that the mother wasn't able to do yet.”
Scott said her mother would get calls “all times of the day and night. You know, children don't have a time clock for when they come.”
Scott said her first child, Beverly, was born in their car “on the corner of (highways) 55 and 77” because she began having her on the way to the hospital, and Stevenson was in the car with them, so they stopped the car, and Beverly was born “right there in the car. Then we just turned around and went home.” She laughed at this memory.
“One thing that I also want told is that my older sister, Rena Mae, learned from Momma how to be a midwife and sometimes she would go deliver when Momma wasn't available,” she added.
“That is serious work,” Scott said. “Sometimes, the babies would be born breach, and Momma did go back most times after three days to check up on the mothers, and had remedies like teas and other things to help the mother heal.”
A famous song by Sam Cooke begins, “I was born by a river in a little tent,” well, I, Mary Ann Finley, was born really close to Caddo Creek, in a little shot-gun house in Newport, Oklahoma, and I'm forever grateful for the loving hands and dedication of the late Roberta “Teevie” Stevenson.