Beverly Johnson-Durham

ROBBY LUCKETT: Today is Saturday December 17, 2016. My name is Robby Luckett. We’re at the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center in Jackson, Mississippi. What’s your name?

BEVERLEY JOHNSON-DURHAM: Beverley Johnson-Durham, B-E— RL: Yes, please spell it.

BJD: —V-E-R-L-E-Y D-U-R-H-A-M.

RL: And do I have your permission to record this interview?

BJD: Yes.

RL: Tell me a little bit about yourself and where you grew up, your parents. What was your home life like?

BJD: I grew up in a small community in Holmes County called Ebenezer, Mississippi. I was blessed to be reared by my grandmother, who’s Carrie Bell Johnson, that was a midwife. Her mom was also a midwife, Rosa Lee Gibson. I’m an only child of my mom, and how I end up growing up with my grandmother, 00:01:00my mom worked up north in New York, and—well, she went up there to work, and she had carried me with her. She end up being the babysitter for the family members, and she was not bein’ paid, so my grandmother in turn asked her to bring me back home, and so I lived with my grandmother, and I was adopted by my grandmother. And just grew up, graduated from Lexington, Tennyson [ph], went to Jackson State for a summer, transferred to USM [University of Southern Mississippi], graduated from USM. Worked in banking, and now I’m employed with the City of Jackson as an executive office coordinator for human and cultural services.

RL: And do you have a family?

BJD: I have a family. I have one son. His name is Jonathan Durham [sp?]. He’s 20. 00:02:00He’s a student at Belhaven University.

RL: Wonderful. So talk about these women who were midwives.

BJD: I’ll start with my grandmother’s mother, Rosa Lee Gibson. She was a midwife, and that’s how my grandmother, Carrie Bell Johnson, got her trade, from great-grandmother. I recall my grandmother attending meetings and trainings at the Health Department. She would have on her white dress, and she had her pin with her name on it that she was very proud of. She delivered over a thousand children within the Holmes County area: Pickens, Goodman, Lexington, Ebenezer. Sometimes she even went into Yazoo City. 00:03:00The rate: I remember people paying her with the chickens, with the hogs, whatever they had. I also remember them making payments on it, as they would come, the last payment, and they would tell my grandmother, “Well, she’s my child now I done paid for, you know, so you can’t come and take my baby,” you know, and joking with them. But it started out—I recall her saying that the fee was $12. Then they had an increase to 14. So when she retired I think she was getting $14 for each child.

RL: When did she retire?

BJD: She retired in the late ’60s, around ’69. 00:04:00RL: And how long had she been being a midwife?

BJD: I spoke with my mom, who is 74, and she was midwifing when she was a child. My grandmother was born in 1900. She received an eighth grade education. She also got married when she was eighth grade. So she started midwifing shortly after that.

RL: Wow. And spell your grandmother’s name for us so we have that.

BJD: C-A-R-R-I-E B-E-L-L J-O-H-N-S-O-N.

RL: How did she get interested in being a midwife? From her mother, obviously.

BJD: Yes, mm-hmm [affirmative]. And I guess there were limited careers back then, and she wanted to do somethin’, and she was interested in it, so she followed in her path.

RL: What do you know about your great-grandmother? 00:05:00BJD: She died when I was six months, so the history with her, I knew very little, but I did know that she was a midwife.

RL: What was her name again?

BJD: Her name was Rosa Lee Gibson. R-O-S-A L-E-E G-I-B-S-O-N.

RL: Do you have any idea how she became a midwife?

BJD: No, I don’t. I really don’t. I don’t know. We knew her parents but in the history it did not state if they were midwives, if her mom was a midwife.

RL: What do you remember about your grandmother from when she was a midwife?

BJD: I remember waking up in the middle of the night, getting a call, or someone comin’ to pick her up, and I would get up, and we always got my school clothes together at night, 00:06:00and I would get up and I would travel with her, and we would go to the different people houses, and if there were other children of course we were curious. And I remember one particular instance where we were trying to peek through the door hole, the keyhole, because we heard my grandmother sayin’, “Oh, the baby is coming. I see the head.” And we were tryin’ to peek through the keyhole. And of course all we could see is darkness, you know, ’cause we were far away. And the next thing you know you would hear a baby crying. And it was experiences like that. You would hear the mother hollerin’. You didn’t hear profanity or anything—they didn’t do anything like that—but it was more of a crying, you know, from being painful that you would hear. And then the next thing you would hear: 00:07:00a baby cryin’.

RL: What did your grandmother bring with her?

BJD: She had a bag. In that bag— She had a bag, and she had a white pan that was trimmed in red that she would wash the baby in. In her bag, she had her tools that were sterilized. She also had the little eye drops that she would break open. They looked like they were in wax, and she would break ’em open and put in the baby’s eyes. But she had her nurse’s bag that she carried, and it had things to sterilize. She made sure everything was sterilized. She prided herself in that. But I just remember she had the bag and she kept all of her things in there. And then she also carried a book that had a list of baby names in it, because it was 00:08:00important to her to spell the names correctly.

RL: So she would produce the—would she produce the birth certificate at that time?

BJD: Yes. Yeah.

RL: And did she wear a uniform?

BJD: No, she didn’t. The only time she wore a uniform was when they would have their meetings and they would go for I guess what, you know, we call now their certification or their training updates then. That’s when she would wear the uniform.

RL: Are there stories that you remember her telling or that you remember, like the peephole as a kid?

BJD: Basically, I had a story. One of my classmates, we went to the house. His sister was givin’ birth. And we would catch the bus together, 00:09:00so on that particular morning we went to the person’s house. Sometimes she would be gone several days, which my mom shared. Edit all that. We’re gon start over. I’ll tell you a story about my mom.

RL: Okay.

BJD: Okay. My mom shared with me that when my grandmother would go out, they didn’t like it, because she would be gone for several days, and she would always say, “Why won’t the lady just wait until the baby is ready to come to come and pick up my grandmother?” But my grandmother would go and she would stay with them for several days until the baby came. And during that time she would assist in taking care, if there were other children, assist in taking care of the other children, and, you know, gettin’ them ready for school. And the downside, 00:10:00from my mom’s perspective, was that my grandfather had to cook, and they did not like his cooking. [Laughter.] RL: What did your grandfather do?

BJD: He was a farmer. We owned our own land, and he farmed.

RL: What did he grow?

BJD: We did cotton. They had a garden—peas, corn. We had cows, we had hogs, and we had chickens.

RL: Your grandmother delivering a thousand babies, she must have been a major figure in the community.

BJD: She was. She was. Everybody looked up to her. She was very well respected. And once she retired from midwifery she was able to help a lot of people get their Social Security, get disability. We often said if she had gone 00:11:00on to college she probably would have been a doctor or an attorney, ’cause she was very, very vocal in the community.

RL: Yeah. Have people told you stories about her?

BJD: No, not that I can recall, ’cause usually I was there, so I was a part of it.

RL: Did your grandmother deliver you?

BJD: Yes. But I was complicated, so they had to call for the doctor to come.

RL: What happened?

BJD: I think I was turned sideways, and so she attempted to deliver me and then they had to call for the doctor. The doctor, he end up being my physician while I was in Lexington, and whenever I would go in to see him he would always tell me I was the reason that he was bald, because when they called 00:12:00they didn’t say the word “emergency.” They said somethin’ else. So he took his time in coming, and when he got there my mom had lost a lot of blood, so she almost died as a result of it. But he made it there in time.

RL: What was his name?

BJD: His name was Paul Broomby [sp?].

RL: Was he a white doctor?

BJD: Yes, mm-hmm [affirmative].

RL: And did your mother just assume that your grandmother would be her midwife? Was that just the way it was gonna be?

BJD: Yeah, I think that was just part of it. She was there in the house, and the baby was comin’, and boom. [Laughter.] RL: Did your mother ever consider being a midwife, you think?

BJD: No, mm-mm [negative]. I don’t.

RL: What other stories do you remember about midwives? Did you know other midwives?

BJD: I was sitting, 00:13:00trying to think of other names, ’cause there were several ladies in the community. I do recall a lady named Ms. Lillie Waddell. She lived in the town north of Lexington, on Highway 17 North. She was a midwife, and they pretty much delivered depending on where they were in the community. So she took care of the babies in the Black Hawk area. That was kind of her area. My grandmother, she took care of the Ebenezer area, the Goodman and Pickens area. So they kinda had their little sections that they covered.

RL: Do you know how to spell Ms. Waddell’s name?

BJD: L-I-L-L-I-E W-A-D-D-E-L-L.

RL: Thank you. It’s great to be able to have that information. 00:14:00Were there other stories that you remember about midwives, or—?

BJD: That’s pretty much it. I don’t have a lot. I’m going to go and look to see if I can retrieve her bag and if I can retrieve her books. We think that they were left at the home house, and it’s still there, so my goal is to try and get some more information so that I can share it with you all.

RL: That would be wonderful. We would love to have that information. And what else do you need to add? What would you like to say here?

BJD: I think it’s a great job of what you all are doing to bring that back, because that is a lost art, and when I went through my pregnancy in ’96, when my son was born, it would have been nice if I could have had somebody to follow through, 00:15:00you know, especially once I got the baby home, to follow through and help. And I just think it’s wonderful that the emphasis that you all are placin’ on the midwives and bringing that information back.

RL: Well, thank you. This was wonderful.

BJD: Okay, thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW]