These are the 4 HBCUs that trained Black nurses to become Black midwives.

Dillard University
Tuskegee University
Meharry University
Charles Drew University

All were wildly successful at producing Black nurse midwives perfectly capable of practice.

@RepAdams @RepUnderwood

Now in the modern sense @MeharryMedical & @cdrewu in their time produced as many Black graduates who successfully passed the American Midwifery Certification Board exam in a single cohort every year than the rest of the existing programs at the time.

Because #BlackGirlMagic

BTW this is your daily public reminder that Black midwives & Black midwifery students are waiting to see that report in the @AMCBmidwife exam pass rates by ethnicity @ACNMmidwives. I have a Twitter account (and a U.S. Rep on the @BMHCaucus @RepLBR) & I’m not afraid to use it.

None were housed within schools of nursing.

All were closed because of lack of support from white authorities and direct hostility from Black physicians who feared Black mamas would preferentially choose Black midwives over physicians thus threatening GME in obstetrics.

Wildly unpopular opinion: we need nurse midwifery programs housed in schools of nursing. Direct entry midwifery housed in nursing or health sciences departments at HBCUs away from SOM.
Nurse midwifery is not midwifery & midwifery is not medicine & we don’t own anyone an apology.

We shouldn’t be training nurses & midwives in SOM that will always view us as a threat because as a discipline rooted in a 5,000 year history of Black femmes caring for Black femmes we reject the notion that human reproduction needs to be supervised & policed by a surgeon. Obvi!

Nor do we need money to improve Black maternal health disparities to be funneled through the white led organizations that have contributed to the disparities through their institutional racism that in turn dehumanizes Black birthing people through viewing us as less than human.

AND keeping Black folk out of nursing, medical & midwifery education for a century & aren’t doing a damn thing now to correct the injustice that doesn’t serve themselves through financial enrichment.

Black midwives should be the primary care provider of Black childbearing people who can collaborate with a Black physician when they need consultation which will be rare when we decide to #CherishBlackMotherhood

PERIODT. Hard stop.

Black nurse midwives are great collaborators for community midwives & Black pregnant people to not only care for Black mamas directly but be a buffer between mamas, midwives & medicine when circumstances necessitate that mamas need additional care beyond traditional midwifery.

And yes we care directly for Black mamas and catch babies too. But maybe more of us need to think beyond the bedside. We’re not a superior discipline to community midwives. PERIODT. Hard stop. If you want to argue that with me, shut up. You’re just dumb.

HBCU deans, presidents, chancellors & regents need to invest in Black women & educational programs traditionally dominated by women like nursing the same way they invest in #BlackMenInMedicine
@CoriBush
Black midwifery & nurse midwifery programs in HBCU schools of nursing.