Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Fall/Section009/Carrie Dykes

Overview

Carrie Dykes was an African-American woman born at Belle Mont outside of Tuscumbia, Alabama in the years following the American Civil War. Dykes' interview was conducted by Ruby Pickens Tartt on October 4, 1938.

Biography

Early Life

Carrie Dykes was born circa 1869 on the former plantation known as Belle Mont, located in Colbert County, Alabama. Both her mother and grandmother had been enslaved by John Worley on the Belle Mont property. Despite emancipation seven years prior to Dykes' birth, she lived at Belle Mont and worked for the owning Mitchell family from a very young age, caring for an ill woman referred to as Miss Minnie Gillespie. Being raised by a white family was a point of pride for Dykes and she did not speak ill of the Mitchells during the interview. Furthermore, throughout her adolescence, Dykes would continue to work around Belle Mont while also attending school and getting an education through the seventh grade.

Career

Upon getting married, Carrie Dykes moved out of the Mitchell house at Belle Mont and took up residence in a small farmhouse with her husband, still on the Mitchell's property. In the early years of marriage, the two would farm the land they lived on. It seems likely the Dykes' family began sharecropping on the Belle Mont property at the end of the Civil War, and Carrie and her husband continued the practice. Dykes was not given the economic footing by her mother or other external factors to enable her to leave Belle Mont and start a life beyond the plantation until a woman named Aunt Susan taught Dykes the trade of midwifing.

Not much is said in the interview about what point in her life Dykes became a midwife, but it does mention her achievements in the field. It appears Carrie Dykes was a highly sought out midwife, delivering around sixty babies in her lifetime. Mothers would request Dykes' services to assist them in labor, and she would often complete the job without the help of a doctor. However, she gave up midwifing in her older age, in part from deteriorating health and also because of stricter state guidelines for midwives that Dykes struggled to keep up with.

Later Life

Once her career declined starting in her 60s, Carrie Dykes dedicated her time to caring for a house full of children, none specified to be hers, and the elderly woman Aunt Susan that got her started as a midwife. She reverted back to farming the land she lives on and selling the crops for profit, putting everything back towards providing for her full house.

Social Issues

Reconstruction-Era South

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1862 and enforced starting in 1863, freed those held in captivity in seceded states under the institution of American slavery. Then, at the end of the American Civil War enslaved people were permanently freed by the Thirteenth Amendment. However, these legal acts did little to grant former slaves the rights or economic standing that would enable them to begin building a life for themselves as a freed person. African-Americans were sent into an America that did not grant them access to the same educational or economic opportunities as their white counterparts, and they were left with no skills or existing wealth to invest in a home or career. As a result, in the period of Reconstruction in the American south, many formerly enslaved people were unable to break their connections from their former enslavers and "Through a complex and lengthy process following the Civil War, the old order of master and slave gave way sharecropping, renting, and wage labor" (Brundage 1993).

Sharecropping

Sharecropping was a way for people, not always formerly enslaved, to sustain themselves by farming land for a wealthier individual, who would give them the right to live on the property in exchange for what they grew on the land. It was another form of unpaid labor that granted a state of personal autonomy but did not separate the worker from a controlling work environment. Many plantation owners were able to keep their same labor source from before the Thirteenth Amendment because formerly enslaved people were often too economically disadvantaged to leave.

The Role of Midwives in Black Communities

"According to the National Black Midwives Alliance (2020), midwives were generally chosen by the community, or felt spiritually called into the profession" (McDaniel 2021), writes Vivienne P. McDaniel in her article exploring the role of midwives in Black communities in the twentieth century. Midwives were one of the most respected and sought out members of African-American communities, revered by both white and black women as a reliable source of healthcare. The practice was passed down through apprenticeship and performed with the utmost skill and care. However, such dedication did not prevent tensions between Black midwives and the predominantly white American healthcare industry.

Changes in the Practice

Beginning in the early twentieth century, Black women were being driven out of the field because they did not have the time nor the funds to pay for proper training from white institutions. In turn, the midwife profession was taken over by white women, and the black women formerly occupying those roles had to find employment elsewhere, which led to the dissolution of the highly respected midwife role in Black communities.

References

Belle Mont. Alabama Historical Commission. Accessed October 17, 2021. https://ahc.alabama.gov/properties/bellemont/bellemont.aspx.
Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. “A Portrait of Southern Sharecropping: The 1911-1912 Georgia Plantation Survey of Robert Preston Brooks.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 77, no. 2 (1993): 367–81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40582714.

Bush, Alex. Belle Mont. Prints and Photographs Division. Library of Congress. Accessed October 16, 2021. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/al0081.photos.001701p/.
Chioneso, Nkechinyelum A., Carla D. Hunter, Robyn L. Gobin, Shardé McNeil Smith, Ruby Mendenhall, and Helen A. Neville. “Community Healing and Resistance Through Storytelling: A Framework to Address Racial Trauma in Africana Communities.” Journal of Black Psychology 46, no. 2–3 (March 2020): 95–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798420929468.
“COUNTRY HISTORY.” County history of Sumter County Alabama. Accessed September 30, 2021. http://genealogytrails.com/ala/sumter/history_county.html.

Lange, Dorothea. Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives. Library of Congress. Accessed October 16, 2021. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b32423/?co=fsa.

McDaniel, Vivienne P. “The Nurse-Midwife: A Prominent Figure in the Black Community,” February 2021. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2501512767/fulltext/3B12A7CA9C2B45C6PQ/1?accountid=14244.
Muigai, Wangui. "“Something Wasn’t Clean”: Black Midwifery, Birth, and Postwar Medical Education in All My Babies." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 93, no. 1 (2019): 82-113. doi:10.1353/bhm.2019.0003.

“Sharecropping.” Digital history. Accessed October 17, 2021. https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3100.

Tartt, Ruby Pickens. “Folder 73: Carrie Dykes, Midwife.” Federal Writers Project Papers. Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Accessed October 17, 2021. https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/03709/id/1007.

Wolcott, Marion Post. Home in Coffee County, Alabama. Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives. Library of Congress. Accessed October 16, 2021. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8c35724/?co=fsa.