"Mamie-Odessa- Hale" (1911-1968)

Nurse midwife,was born in Pennsylvania.Little is known of her family or early life.She is besat known for her work with African American midwives in Arkansas during the 1940s; her efforts are credited with having reduced drasttically the race-based disparities in maternal mortality in that state at mid-century.Mamie trained in and practiced public health nursing in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania,before attending the Tuskegee School of Nurse-Midwifery in Alabama.Mamie,who received a certificate in midwifery from the program,was one of thirty-one African American women graduates of the Tuskegee school, only the fourth such education program in the United States. Opened in 1942 the school was also the first postgraduate nurse-pactitoner course in midwifery for African American students.It awarded both master's degrees and certificates, it closed in 1946,as did several other programs for African American nurse-midwives begun at that time,due to white opposition and 
reductions in federal funding.

In 1942 she was recruited by the Arkansas State Board of Health to work with its maternal-child health programs and particularly with African American granny midwives,so called because their ages ranged generally between sixty& eighty.Her recruitment reflected a shift in the landscape of American public health,begun after the passage of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infant Protection Act in 1921,that supplied funds to aid state and local efforts to reduce infant and maternal mortality by establishing training programs and legislating medical intervention.The
act expired in 1929,the model of care it established greatly influenced later initiatives.

Countywide maternal mortality had declined significantly in the early 20th century,African American women especially in the rural South,were still at a 
great risk of death from complications of pregnancy and delivery.The Sheppard-Towner model attributed these high rates of maternal mortality among African Americans in the South both to economic conditions,as was the case in the North,and to the fact that these birth were attended by granny midwives.These midwives represented a vexing dilemma for the medical establishment.On the one hand,their practices were implicated in exacerbating the problems of maternal mortality among African American women because,much like early physicians,they lacked training in 
hygiene and the proper treatment of pregnancy complications.On the other hand,granny midwives-also called granny doctors- were often the sole source of 
health care for disenfranchised African Americans in the South.In Arkansas by the 1940s African American still were two and half times more likely than white women 
to die from complications of childbirth.Thus the Arkansas legislature considered several  proposals to address the discrepancy between black & white maternal mortality.Most of these proposals involved several scaling back influence of the granny midwives in accordance with the lessons learned through the Sheppard-Towner years.The war caused a shortage of physicians and nurses,and the dearth of training opportunities for African Americans in the state made the granny midwives 
a necessary tool for managing African American health care.

It was decided that Mamie,a trained nurse on staff who,it was assumed, could relate to the granny midwives,would serve as a compromise for this government-initiated effort at reducing African American maternal and inflant mortality.In 1945 she was promoted to the position of midwife-consultant for the Maternal and Child Heath Division of the Arkansas Health Department.Her task was to implement a statewide training program for midwives,after completion of which they were to receive state certification.In her seven-sessions courses, conducted in churches and schools,Nurse Hale (As she was referred to by the midwives) offered instruction on current midwiery methods,including proper sterilization of delivery tools, proper hand-washing techniques,maintaining prenatal contact with clients, proper caseload size,evaluating clients' diet, prenatal care, and seeking medical supervision for cases.She encouraged the midwives to view their training as a move toward modernity.Using a transportation analogy,Mamie prompted the women to become sophisticated "airplane" midwives,having recently been commercialized.Many midwives took this recommendation to heart,referring to those who stuck doggedly 
to the old ways  as "horse-and-buggy."