Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 12/Mary Willingham

Overview
Mary Willingham was an African American woman who was interviewed for the Federal Writer's Project by Sadie Hornsby, Sarah Hall, and John Booth on March 24, 1939, in Georgia. She was a practical nurse and struggled to obtain her midwifery certification but was unable to do so due to perpetuating stereotypes about the "inferior" minds of African Americans.

Biography
Willingham’s exact birthdate is unknown, but she was born in Clarke County, Georgia, on a farm. Her mother died when she was a baby, but she worked in the fields as a child with her father, only stopping to attend Morton’s Chapel School. She stayed at the school until second grade and then dropped out to work on the fields, leaving herself illiterate and uneducated. Her sister raised her until a white family took her in. She worked for that family until she got married. After marrying her husband, who was recently separated from his first wife, her sister-in-law, who was a nurse, had fallen ill and asked Willingham to take her job. Willingham had also had bad experiences while being treated in a hospital before, as her white physician did not take her seriously. With both of these things in mind, she began working as a nurse in 1924 and received her nursing certification in 1926. She treated many patients in a makeshift hospital in Georgia with varying problems and helped with many procedures, such assisting with tumor removals in operating rooms; however, many families would not take her seriously. For example, she was tending to a pregnant woman whose pulse was racing, and Willingham asked her to sit down and relax. The woman's father did not believe what Willingham was saying and called for a white physician to confirm. Because of this, most of the patients Willingham treated were black. As a nurse, Willingham did not make enough money to support her family, so she wanted to get another certificate to practice midwifery in order to earn more money. However, she was unable to do so. She had four kids, two boys and two girls. One daughter and one son lived with Willingham, while the other two moved to Atlanta. As Willingham grew older, she moved into a small cottage with her children. She also gave up her job as a nurse and did other people's laundry for a living.

Inequality in Healthcare Professions for African Americans
Black women were once coveted for their abilities in healthcare. Especially in the south, white women would refuse to nurse their babies, as it was a practice that was looked down upon as a form of labor. Researcher West states, "For the most part, though, wet-nursing represented a site of exploitation for enslaved women within the broader context of the antebellum slave regime." However, black women continued to nurse their babies, who grew quickly. When white women realized that their own children were not growing very well, they forced black women to nurse their white babies. This discrimination in healthcare was just the start. During this era, discrimination was prevalent for African Americans trying to pursue jobs in healthcare. Nursing/midwifery certification programs and medical schools would rarely, if ever, accept black applicants. As indicated in researcher Muigai’s analysis, “Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, the practice [midwifery] was increasingly attacked by physicians who viewed midwives as a ‘problem’- untrained, dirty, and even criminal." Even if black applicants were accepted, they were not allowed into any of the American Medical Association's meetings or its societies and could not become delegates of the organization. In fact, "The AMA supported this [keeping blacks from joining the AMA and its societies] -- it refused to interfere or penalize those societies," according to researcher Sidhu. Blacks in healthcare were not taken seriously, and their judgment was often questioned. Black physicians were only able to treat black patients. According to researcher Byrd, "White physicians only saw blacks as patients if forced to." When the AMA asked for a report of all the medical/nursing schools in the United States, all but two of the black medical schools were shut down. This lowered the amount of black doctors and nurses in the country, contributing to the belief that black minds are lesser, even though black midwives had lower infant/maternal mortality rates than white physicians.

Unequal Education for African Americans
During this era, the Supreme Court case ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson was still intact. In this Supreme Court case, it was stated that having separate but equal places for blacks and whites was constitutional. In other words, it was legal for there to be separate bus seats, bathrooms, etc. for different races. This ruling was also applicable to schools, so black and white students were forced to go to different schools. This led to a large discrepancy between the quality of education between the two schools. At first, the only schools available for blacks were called "Jim Crow Schools." They were called Jim Crow Schools because of the Jim Crow Laws that called for racial segregation. These were schools that only taught skills for work in the fields and home. The actual amount that states spent on the schools differed greatly as well. For every thirty-two dollars the state of Georgia spent on a white student, seven dollars were spent on a black student. Black teachers' salaries were also lower than those of their white counterparts. According to researcher Irons, "The monthly salary of black teachers in the South in 1930 was about 60 percent of the white average, $73 for blacks and $118 for whites, with the yearly school term in white schools about two months longer, which added to the salary gap." On average, one out of every eight black adults completed high school. In comparison, four out of every ten whites had obtained their diplomas. Eventually, the ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned in 1954 by another Supreme Court Case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. In this case, the court ruled that separate facilities are inherently unequal and thus are unconstitutional. After this ruling, black students test scores began to rise, as they had better teachers and resources.