She ain't no mammy: African American midwives' utilization of Ma'at in the preservation and continuation of African epistemology

This dissertation takes a historiographical-Afronographic approach, examining the African American midwife from her forced placement on Southern plantations in the United States to the present day. These midwives were gatekeepers of a rich cultural tradition grounded in an African matriarchal episteme. There is a long history of debasement of the African women’s body built on a false racial hierarchy where Black women were at the bottom, the lowest tier of society. She has had to endure unimaginable horrors within the confines of a racist, patriarchal society that was antithetical to the preservation of African spirit and culture. Black midwives were able to tap into a deep ancestral epistemological collective, granting access to birthing knowledge that had been maintained and preserved for thousands of years. The survival of this knowledge depended on the midwife’s adaptability to a foreign environment that did not share African cultural values of respect for women and mothering. Many have written on the medicalization of childbirth in the United States and the disappearance of Grand Black midwives. This work aims to show that the legacy of the Grand Black midwives lives on in contemporary Black midwives and in their continuity of African cultural birthing traditions, despite attacks to destroy their reputability as healers.