African American Nurse-Midwives

Abstract

With the greatest need for improvements of maternity care in the south, this chapter returns the focus to the southern states. The National Organization of Public Health Nurses acknowledged the vital role African American nurse-midwives played in the public health education of black women and their families and two schools were established, one of which was the Tuskegee School of Nurse-Midwifery in Alabama. Much of the chapter is devoted to the specific training required to be effective in the isolated, poverty stricken communities of the rural south and shows how cultural sensitivity was central to nurse-midwives’ work.