The story of Granny Hayden, a Black midwife who was born into slavery

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• John Yang:

  For Black History Month, our partners at StoryCorps are amplifying black voices with conversations about activism, love, joy and leadership. Tonight the story of Mary Stepp Burnette Hayden. She was born into slavery on a plantation in Black Mountain, North Carolina, after she was freed in 1865 when she was seven, she remained there going on to become a midwife.

  At StoryCorps, Hayden's granddaughter Mary Othella Burnette told her great granddaughter Deborah Hamilton Palmer, about their family matriarch.

• Mary Othella Burnette:

  She probably weighed not more than 110 pounds. She was about four feet 11 inches tall, and her hair hung well below her waist. She had deep set eyes and a fierce look as if she were looking right through you.

• Deborah Hamilton Palmer:

  What was your relationship with her like mom?

• Mary Othella Burnette:

  She delivered me. She used to tell me how I started her and my dad a few minutes after I was born by opening my eyes and turning my head to look around the room. And she said, God, look at that.

  My grandmother love to talk and most of our stores are bad. But granny's stories were real life stories. She didn't know anything about Hansel and Gretel. Here is this woman, a former slave walking around delivering babies and helping people. You have to understand that back when grannies started there were no hospitals for black people to go to and poor people had no money to pay for professional medical care. So if you had a disease that could not be treated by midwife, you died at home.

  Houses could be several miles apart, and bears commonly roamed the neighborhoods. But she walked. If somebody needed help, Granny was going black and whites alike. It made no difference to her. She was fearless. You know, you never boasted about what she did.

  But she probably caught several 100 babies, if not more.

• Deborah Hamilton Palmer:

  How old was going ahead and when she stopped her practice?

• Mary Othella Burnette:

  She was about 90 years old. She was a very strong little woman. You know, when people think about slavery, they think about hundreds of years ago, not about somebody who died in 1956. She was a pillar, not only in our family, but in our community.

  And I assume she would always be there. Like when you're a child, you assume everything's going to be there. But I'm very proud to have descended from someone like my grandmother. Very, very proud.