from Motherwit: an Alabama Midwife's Story an oral history by Onnie Lee Logan as told to Katherine Clark Durin the first ten years of my career as a midwife, it was mainly black families I delivered for. Those black families I was deliverin for, they was po'. Especially durin the first times they was po'. Hardly nothin but po' in those days. It was po' times. It really was no jobs. When I first started to work the houses of the black neighborhoods, some of the houses was about the same as the houses in Sweet Water. They was livin in houses that mostly as they used to call em shotgun houses. There was probably two bedrooms and a kitchen for most of em. Maybe a porch. Most of em in those times in the bedrooms they would squeeze in two beds to the room. It would always mostly have two beds to a room and a cot for em to sleep. For all of em. Three or fo' sleep with the parents. Five or six with the parents. Especially with the general run of em. . . . . . . . When I walk into a house and find all a that where they have so many kids and cain't hardly support em, I'd wanna cry and plenty times I have cried. I did everything I could for em. I would clean up the house all the time. I would he'p em to wash. I would share my soap and all a that with em if they didn't have any. I would go in there and clean it up. I said I got to get this straight befo' we can go ahead. I just clean up. Sometimes they didn't have nothin to put on the baby. Mother didn't have anything to put on the baby but a receivin blanket. And that's all. Between contractions I would take an old skirt and make somethin for that baby to put on when it got here. I would sit there and sew it while waitin on the contractions to pick up. Cut it out and sew it and have it ready for somethin to put on em.