Statistics & data
“A workforce that nearly vanished” — ~9,000 (1918) → ~1,500 (1950) → under 600 (1962)
Women with Women: The History of Midwifery in Lynchburg and Central Virginia (1918 figure); Claudine Curry Smith & Mildred H. B. Roberson, My Bag Was Always Packed (2003), p. 44 (1950 & 1962 figures).
Historical accounts
Walter Plecker “pressured midwives directly”
Library of Virginia — “The New Virginia Law To Preserve Racial Integrity,”
Virginia Health Bulletin, March 1924.
View source ↗Orlean Hawks Puckett — “died three weeks after moving”
Karen Cecil Smith, Orlean Puckett: The Life of a Mountain Midwife, 1844–1939 (pp. 129–30).
Mary “Mary Si” Fullen — the record that names her
Nancy Fullon Axon, written oral-history interview — Emory & Henry University Library.
View source ↗Rebecca Fullen — county death record
“Southwest Virginia Miscellaneous Death Records,” comp. Jack Hockett — New River Notes.
View source ↗Postpartum care — weekly baby baths in Wise County
Mary Elizabeth “Toddy” Collins, oral history of delivering babies in Preacher Creek, Wise County.
Postpartum care — two to six weeks of seclusion and recovery
Gertrude Jacinta Fraser, African American Midwifery in the South (pp. 34, 242).
