User:Chandlersimpson/Auntgrannylularusseau1

Lula Russeau
A midwife collecting her tools in the southern United States in 1941.
Born	August 16, 1861 Eufaula, Alabama, USA
Died	October 15, 1946 Eufala, Alabama, USA
Other names	"Aunt Granny"
Occupation	Midwife
Known for	Participant in the Federal Writers Project

Lula “Aunt Granny” Russeau was a midwife born August 16, 1861 during the American Civil War in Eufaula, Alabama. In 1938, she was interviewed by the Federal Writers' Project by Gertha Couric.

Biography

Early Life

Russeau was born into slavery and owned by Andrew and Adelaide McKenzie. She was of Native American decent, but listed as African American and United States censuses. Russeau’s mother was a Chickasaw from Virginia while her father was a Native American from South Carolina who died when she was a few months old. Russeau was very proud of her Native American heritage. When African American slaves were freed when Russeau was five, she and her mother remained with the McKenzies, whom she claimed were very good people. Remaining with her former masters caused Russeau to be threatened by Northern soldiers during Reconstruction. Russeau was raised by her mother, who was also a midwife, as well as a washerwoman. She taught her not only how to cook, spin, wash, sew, and iron, but also passed down the knowledge of traditional Native American herbs and charms, leading some to later believe that Russeau was a voodoo sorceress. Russeau did believe she had been born with the talent of precognition. However, Russeau was a Christian. Russeau’s mother was a talented herbal healer and did not believe in modern medicine, instead relying on superstitious beliefs and her herbs. She also knew how to read, but not how to write.

Career as a Midwife and Later Life

Lula married Dave Russeau in 1878. They had eleven children together, although one child died at an early age, although it is unclear when. Russeau was proud of her work as a midwife, which, by 1938, she had been doing for around fifty years, delivering over 500 children by her own estimate. She incorporated her mother’s herbal teachings into her own work to prevent miscarriages or to predict unborn children’s’ sex. She also made extensive use of superstition in her work and in her daily life. She claimed that a knife placed under a pillow would reduce labor pains and if a cow moos in the night, someone is about to die. Although the demand for midwives was declining as the mid-twentieth century approached, Russeau maintained that she was a prolific midwife, although she acknowledged that she experienced difficulties including failed births. Russeau even called in a male physician during a difficult labor and was able to induce birth without the doctor’s assistance. Russeau was widowed when Dave Russeau died in March of 1926. She died on the 15th of October in 1946 in Eufaula, Alabama.

Social and Political Issues

Reconstruction and the Life of Freedmen in Rural Alabama

It was not uncommon for freedmen to be hesitant to emancipate themselves from their old lives as slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. Many jobs, such as sharecropping, were predatory while well-paying jobs were difficult for freed slaves to acquire. Some freedmen were able to own businesses and find middle-class jobs due to their education but most struggled due to their lack of land ownership. Many would have to move from one plantation to the next looking for work and, while technically free from traditional slavery, were living an alternate form of slavery. Many freedmen in the South were still unable to vote due to violence and intimidation by white citizens. Despite this, some freedmen at the time were beginning to enter the world of politics and gain significant positions in municipal and state government. However, much of this success was based off of political patronage as a way for white Republican officeholders to make a political statement about the future of the Southern United States.

The Decline of Midwifery

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Traditional African Americans midwives waiting for a training meeting to begin.

In 1900, fifty-percent of births were delivered by midwives but in 1921, under the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act, there was a revolution in midwifery. The act permitted the federal government to regulate and check the practices of midwives through the Children’s Bureau and also increased funding for midwife education. The act employed “Shepard-Towner nurses” to train midwives to use modern medical materials for safety, record births with their respective states, and to request assistance from physicians during demanding labors. The act was also focused on reducing midwifery’s ties to superstitious and traditional herbal birthing practices. It was unsuccessful especially in remote areas of the American South where midwives refused to abandon these practices due to their religious and cultural importance. The increased role of male physicians in birthing, a practice traditionally though to be an “extension of maternal responsibility” began to undermine the traditional midwife, who was an immigrant or African American woman, by depicting them as ignorant and dangerous. In reality, immigrant midwives were usually highly-educated and midwives had lesser maternal mortality rates than licensed physicians in 1900. Boston, where midwifery was illegal, had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country in 1921. Despite this, the rate of births carried out by midwives dropped in the United States by 35 percent between 1910 and 1930. Male physicians filled the female role in birthing with trained nurses. Midwives only continued to be most prevalent in the birthing of Southern African Americans. In the wake of significant maternal mortality rates during birth in the 1930s, the government created more codes and standards for midwives to more closely resemble those of licensed physicians at the time. Factions of the federal and state governments called for stricter licensing and training procedures for as the rate of midwife births decreased.