Margaret Charles Smith

Margaret Charles Smith was born on September 12, 1906 in Eutaw, Alabama and was the only child of Beulah Sanders, who died shortly after her birth in 1906.[1][2][3] Smith was raised by her grandparents following her mother's death. Her grandparents were local farmers, and her grandmother, Margaret Charles, was a former slave and midwife.[2] She attended a rural grammar school in her hometown of Eutaw, Alabama, but the demands of farming sometimes interrupted her schooling, and she left school entirely at age 16 when her grandfather died.[2][3]

Smith's first experience with midwifery was at age five. While assisting at the bedside of the wife of a cousin of her future husband, Smith caught the infant when it was born before the midwife arrived at the home.[2] Smith became interested in midwifery in her teens but didn't begin training until her late thirties, with a local midwife named Ella Anderson. In 1949, Greene County issued a permit for Smith to practice midwifery, making her one of the county's first official midwives.[2] In that era, "granny midwives" (as lay African-American midwives like Smith were informally called) were crucial to the lives of Southern black women because most hospitals would not admit them as patients.[2][4] Smith worked in three local clinics alongside medical doctors for twenty-eight years assisting in the transition to modern medicine and medical routines.[5] During her 35-year career, Smith delivered over 3000 babies to mothers who were often malnourished and in poor health.[2][3] Despite this, she lost almost none of the babies and none of the mothers in childbirth.[2][6] During the period in which she practiced (ca. 1945–ca. 1980), infant mortality among African-American women ranged from around 74 to around 22 per thousand babies born, levels that underline how remarkable her own record was.[7]

In 1976, Alabama outlawed traditional midwifery, but Smith was allowed to continue on for a while due to her experience. She received her last permit to practice midwifery in 1981.[3] (The state later passed laws allowing nurse-midwives to practice in hospitals).[6]

In 1996, Smith cowrote a book about her life, Listen to Me Good: The Life Story of an Alabama Midwife.[2] Her coauthor, Linda Janet Holmes, is a research scientist and board member of the National Black Women's Health Project. One reviewer wrote of this book that it transcended the genre of midwife memoirs by examining "the larger context of class and race relations in a state that was at the epicenter of the Civil Rights struggle."[4] Published by Ohio State University Press, it won the press's Helen Hooven Santmyer Prize.[8]

In 1943, she married Randolph Smith.[3] They lived on her grandmother's farm, and farming remained Smith's main source of income for her entire life.[2]

Smith gave birth to three sons, Spencer Charles, Huston Charles, and Herman Smith, her first son was born while she was still in her teens.[4] She served as her own midwife for her second birth, her others accompanied by midwives.[9][10] She also served as the midwife for the first born daughter of her son Spencer and his wife Betty. The tradition continued with her being present at the birth of her granddaughter's first child.

Smith continued to farm throughout her life until just before her death.[2] Despite health issues (including hypertension and peripheral vascular disease), Smith lived to be 98 years old, dying in 2004.[2]

In 1983, Smith was given the keys to Eutaw, the first black American to receive this honor.[6]

In 1985, she was honored by the National Black Women’s Health Project.[3]

In 1997, Smith was the keynote speaker at the New Orleans Rural Health Initiative.[2]

In 2003, she was honored by the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C.[2]

In 2004, she was given a lifetime achievement award at the Black Midwife and Healer’s Conference.[2]

In 2008, a documentary film about Smith's life was released. Entitled Miss Margaret, it was directed by Diana Paul.

In 2010, Smith was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame.

• Smith, Margaret Charles, and Linda Janet Holmes. Listen to Me Good: The Life Story of an Alabama Midwife. Women and Health Series. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996.

• Miss Margaret preview on YouTube