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Overview
Lavinia McKee (born circa 1875) was a Black midwife in Beaufort County, South Carolina during the Great Depression. She was interviewed by Chlotilde R. Martin for the Federal Writers' Project in 1939.

Biography
Lavinia McKee was a Black woman born around 1875 in Beaufort Country, South Carolina, in the Sea-Island region along the Atlantic Coast of the United States. Her father was enslaved on a rice plantation along the Savannah River. Her mother, aunt, and grandmother were enslaved midwives. Her father left her mother when she was six months old. She went to go live with her father. Her mother had three more children with another man. McKee married her husband at 19 and had two sons and one daughter. She also adopted six children. The names of her family members are unknown. At the time of Federal Writers’ Project interview, McKee lived in a two-story house on her 66-acre family farm on Port Royal Island. She lived with her husband, grandson, and youngest adopted daughter. Her birth children all got married. Her daughter moved to New York and her sons to New Jersey. Five of her adopted children got married and moved out.

McKee worked as a midwife. She believed that midwifery was her duty and in her blood. Her mother, aunt, and grandmother taught her about traditional Black spiritual midwifery. She started practicing midwifery by attending births with her aunt. She worked with a partner, whose identity is unknown, and they charged $10.00 per birth. She also attended legally-mandated medical classes taught by the White public health nurse.

McKee was tall, well-built, and friendly. She was considered an economically and professionally successful Black woman of that time period.

Her date of death is unknown.

Black Midwifery Traditions and Spirituality
When African women were first enslaved in the New World, they adapted traditional West African birthing practices out of necessity in order to birth babies on plantations, utilizing roots, herbs, teas, and natural ointments along with superstitions. Spirituality tied to birthing became an integral part of the broader Hoodoo system. Hoodoo is an African-American spiritual system of beliefs, practices, and traditions created during slavery, combining adapting African spiritualities to life in the new world. Hoodoo midwives were highly regarded members of their community.6

According to the book Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System by Katrina Hazzard-Donald, “Through prayer, incantation, potions, amulets, sacred objects, procedures, and rituals, [midwives] treated and safeguarded the birthing woman’s heightened spiritual vulnerability.” Through these practices, midwives attended to both the physical and spiritual dimensions of childbirth.7 Attending to the physical aspect, midwives would give pregnant women tansy and mud dauber nest tea to induce or speed up labor. Then, when labor pains intensified, they would provide tea made from only mud dauber nests. They also managed the pregnant woman’s pains by secretly placing a sharp object, such as an axe or knife, under the bed or having them blow into a bottle coated with sulphur and lard.8 Attending to the spiritual aspect, some midwives would plant three brand new nails at the entrance of the home to ward off evil spirits. If the infant died during or shortly after birth, midwives would advise mothers on specific rituals to prevent the death of her next child.9 To ensure the well-being of the baby, some midwives tied strings around the baby's wrists and ankles to ensure strength. Babies who were immediately placed under the birthing bed were guaranteed to be good children. Children who were born with a caul over their heads were believed to have a “second sight” and power that could be used for good or evil. To counteract this, midwives could feed the dried caul in bread to the child when they are older.10 While specific practices varied between regions and midwives, Black midwifery practice across the South stemmed from similarly informed Hoodoo traditions.

Black midwives learned the practice through apprenticing with older midwives, often in their family. The apprenticing midwife would follow her mentor on birthing visits, assisting with sewing and cleaning. Once the apprentice has had their own first child and has been accompanying their mentor for a few years, she is allowed to help with delivering babies and can attend late-night calls in place of her mentor. When the mentoring midwife retired, she officially passed her practice down to her apprentice. This tradition of apprenticeship allowed for traditional Black midwifery beliefs practices to be maintained across generations.11

Discrimination Against Black Midwives
By the early 20th century, 50% of all births, included those of White women, were attended to by Black midwives.12 As the prominence of and respect for Black midwifery grew, white male physicians, through a racist network of legal regulation, propaganda, and sanitation codes, pushed Black women out of the practice of childbirth.13

In order to bring about legal reform to exclude Hoodoo practicing Black midwives Hoodoo, White doctors spread propaganda to demonize their rituals and beliefs. They painted Black midwifery practice and unsanitary, contrary to science, dangerous, and barbaric. In his 1915 speech entitled “Progress Towards Ideal Obstetrics,” Dr. Joseph DeLee, an influential 20th obstetrician, declared the following:"The midwife is a relic of barbarism. In civilized countries the midwife is wrong, has always been wrong … The midwife has been a drag on the progress of the science and art of obstetrics. Her existence stunts the one and degrades the other. For many centuries she perverted obstetrics from obtaining any standing at all among the science of medicine … Even after midwifery was practiced by some of the most brilliant men in the profession, such practice was held opprobrious and degraded.14"The goal of these racist and misogynistic propaganda campaigns was to eradicate Black midwifery and promote White supremacy through medicine.15

In terms of legislation, the South Carolina Sanitary Codes, enforced by the South Carolina State Board of Health, “documented the coercive ways in which nurse midwifery supervisors mandated midwifery-training seminars for South Carolina midwives and rounded up the midwife in order to showcase the “newly” educated midwife and the demise of the older midwife.”16 They established a discriminatory medical hierarchy that suppressed and criminalized the work of Black midwives practicing Hoodoo. White nurses were deemed more medically authoritative than Black midwives, appointed to teach medical courses and supervise the practices of Black midwives. These courses and supervisions were mandated for all South Carolina midwives. Nurses frequently inspected Black midwives’ bags and could suspend their practice for up to six months if the bags were found to be insufficient or included Hoodoo remedies. State appointed nurses could also revoke the midwifery certificates of Black midwives that allowed them to practice if they were deemed inadequate.17