Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 10/Lavinia McKee

Overview
Lavinia McKee was a black midwife and farmer living and working on Port Royale Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina. She was interviewed for the Federal Writers' Project on January 27th, 1939 by Chlotilde R. Martin in her home on Port Royale Island.

Early Life and Family
Lavinia McKee was a black woman born in Beaufort County, South Carolina in 1876, where her father worked on a rice plantation to support their family. McKee's parents separated when she was young, and she lived with her father until she could monetarily support herself. This was a rarity at the time and a sign that the McKee's family was wealthier than most black families in the rural South. Unlike most black farmers in the South who were indebted to white plantation owners due to sharecropping practices, McKee’s father had managed to gain ownership of the rice plantation and eventually passed it down to his daughter.

McKee married at the age of 19 and had three children: two sons and one daughter. She and her husband owned and farmed the sixty-six acres of land she inherited from her father, producing crops for themselves and to sell to vegetable trucks. As her children grew, she became a midwife to deliver their babies. She eventually adopted her son’s child when her children decided to move north. She later adopted six more children to combat the loneliness she felt living solely with her grandson and husband on the farm.

Career
McKee worked as a midwife for over 20 years, continuing a tradition held by the women in her family for generations. However, in accordance with changes brought about by modern medicine, McKee rejected the ancient teas and ointments once praised by her mother and aunt, saying that "ain't no tea, neither no rubbin' gonna do no good." She resolved that the midwifery classes required by the state health department extended her knowledge much further than what had been passed down through her family.

McKee explained that although she was tied to her responsibilities on the farm, she was strongly obligated to midwifery, too. She and her partner, another black midwife, established a steady rate for each case and required transportation from their clients. This system allowed her to provide for her family with extra earnings and continue the work the women in her family had passed down for years. McKee died in 1965 in Beaufort County, SC.

Black Midwifery
Midwifery was a particularly common job among black women in South Carolina. Black midwives were often called "granny midwives" and practiced in rural communities in the South where black mothers preferred to avoid hospital births due to overt racism and heavy costs. They were “well-respected figures in the community” who not only attended births, but symbolized motherly healers with knowledge and wisdom of “herbal and patent medicines” accumulated through generations of women in their families.

Physicians, who were overwhelmingly male and white at the time, characterized “their practices as superstitious and home births as dangerous,” which had positive and negative implications for midwives. This sentiment greatly decreased the number of practicing midwives and encouraged Progressive reformers to associate African-American midwifery with higher infant mortality rates. However, once reformers began requiring regulation among midwives, the 1921 Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act was passed to allocate funds to health departments to set up midwifery training. The Act helped black midwives to learn how to perform "sterile procedures, register new births with the state, and use silver nitrate eye drops to prevent gonococcal blindness" which significantly improved quality of care for their patients. They also took on new roles in the community with their education, spreading knowledge about immunization and nutrition for children.

Sharecropping
Sharecropping was a practice founded in the South during the Reconstruction era where farmers worked a piece of land and submitted part of the crop to the owner every year. A large proportion of sharecroppers were black because urban job opportunities were located in the North, where many black people did not have the resources to move to, and were more often given to whites. If they could afford it, the black farmers would later purchase the land they worked on, but unfair labor contracts drove many into cycles of debt and poverty before they could. The number of black farmers who owned their land eventually increased in the decades after emancipation, and by 1900, “25 percent of black farmers” claimed their property. However, the successes of many black farmers were only temporary, as the Southern economy greatly suffered during the Great Depression in the 1930s. The Southern economy was still largely dependent on cotton in the 1930's, and as "cotton prices plummeted" due to "overproduction and loss of overseas markets" black farmers fell into poverty. Many were forced to sell their assets and land to feed their families.