chapter 3
Doctors We Didn’t Have, Midwives We Couldn’t Lose
Roots, Remedies, and Survival in Early Altare
“Where there is no doctor, the women become the doctors. Where there is no hospital, the house becomes the hospital. Where there is no mercy from the world, the community becomes the mercy”. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
The Hands of Mercy
In the red clay hills of Altare, long before paved roads or county nurses, life began and often ended in the hands of women who carried no medical degrees, wore no white coats, and kept no official offices. They arrived with prayer, with inherited memory, with herbs tucked into aprons, and with hands strengthened by the work of farm life. They were the midwives—the healers—the women who stitched the beginning and ending of life together with whatever tools the times allowed.
Families depended on them not simply because doctors were far away, but because for much of the early twentieth century, there were simply no doctors for Black families in rural Mississippi. Babies were born by lamplight in cabins tucked back from the wagon roads. Mothers labored surrounded by women who had themselves delivered dozens of children with nothing more than experience and faith.
In Altare, the midwife was more than a birth attendant; she was the guardian of survival in a world stacked against Black life.
The Healers of the Hilltop
Among the families of Altare, four women stood at the center of this fragile miracle. They were the “First Responders” of the ridge:
- Iley Jane Evans (1860–1955): Born enslaved, Iley Jane stepped into freedom at age six. She spent her adulthood working a small farm in Section 17, but her true calling was written on the stillbirth and birth certificates of the county. Though she could not read or write, her competence was legendary. From 1912 to 1936, she walked miles of dirt road to deliver joy and sorrow, carrying every loss home with her in a dignified silence.
- Melinda Evans Watson (1866–?): The daughter of Benjamin Evans, Melinda was a midwife whose life was woven into the tangled branches of the community’s primary family lines. She was a woman of immense discretion and endurance, appearing as the attendant for families facing their darkest moments, including the losses suffered by the Chapman and Mosley families.
- Malissie Hills (1871–1935): A woman of quiet authority, Malissie was a formal member of the “Midwife Club” for over a decade. She didn’t just catch babies; she tended fevers, comforted grieving mothers, and served as a community instructor in infant care long before the state sent nurses to Newton County.
- Mary Rigsby: A trusted, quiet presence whose name appears in the records across multiple homesteads. She was part of that invisible network of healers who ensured that even in the most isolated cabins, a mother never labored alone.
The Cliff’s Edge: A Memorial to Mothers
Childbirth in early Altare was a dangerous crossing. For Black women, it was a cliff’s edge. In 1930, the maternal death rate for Black women in Mississippi was staggering—twelve mothers out of every thousand died giving birth.
We honor the women of Altare whose bodies could not endure the relentless strain, but whose names remain part of our sacred record:
- Annie Evans Arrington (1892–1914): Gone at twenty-two from septic fever.
- Arena Hoye Chapman (1889–1913): Taken by complications that today would be treatable with a simple surgery.
- Anna Belle Ellis Evans (1897–1918): A victim of the global influenza pandemic, dying the day after delivering a stillborn daughter.
- Leola Evans Rigsby (1900–1941): Who died in childbirth alongside her newborn daughter, Pauline.
The Sacred Ledger of the Infants
Starting in 1912, the state began to require the recording of “Vital Statistics.” Because the midwives of Altare complied with the law, they created a ledger of lives that otherwise would have been lost to history. These were children who never took a breath, or who lived only long enough to be named.
They were the children of the Chapmans, Colemans, Evanses, Johnsons, and Walkers. By recording these deaths, the midwives and fathers of Altare performed an act of resistance: they insisted that these brief lives mattered. They were not just “statistics”; they were the beloved sons and daughters of a community that refused to let them be invisible.
From Tradition to Recognition
By the mid-1930s, the world began to acknowledge what Altare already knew: the community survived because of its women. The Mississippi State Board of Health began inspecting midwives at local Black churches—including Altare. They checked for clean tools, silver nitrate for newborns’ eyes, and sanitary practices.
This marked one of the first times rural Black women’s work received official validation. These “Midwife Clubs” turned the tide, and infant mortality began to drop. The women who once walked home at dawn with hands smelling of soap and woodsmoke were finally seen for what they were: the indispensable doctors of the red clay.
Reflection
The history of Altare is often told through land deeds and church steeples, but it was sustained by the quiet heroism of the midwife. She was the one who walked into the dark when the world offered no mercy. She was the bridge between the ancestors and the next generation. Because she stood her ground at the bedside, the community lived to see another day.
THE MIDWIVES OF ALTARE
“God sent them where the doctors wouldn’t go.”
sources
- The Newton Record, Vital Statistics, Thu, Mar 27, 1924 ·Page 8