Feb. 13, 2025-The DeSoto County Museum will observe “Black History” Saturday with an art exhibit and a symposium.
The exhibit, featuring the odd numbered pencil drawings in artist Frank Frazier’s Goree Island, will be on display throughout the month of February. The symposium and program is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 15. Both are in keeping with the 2025 African American History Month theme, “African Americans and Labor”, as announced by The Association for the Studying of African American Life and History (ASALH). This national organization founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, “father of Black History” annually selects a theme to focus public attention on issues in African American life and race relations.
The symposium will recognize various DeSoto County African Americans for their roles in labor, the Labor Movement, and honor a group of medical pioneers, “Granny Midwives of DeSoto County,” a group of women who delivered thousands of babies from the period of slavery until the late 1960s when their craft was outlawed.
Families of the Midwives in DeSoto County will also be recognized and share memories. Refreshments will precede the program at 1:30 p.m. in the Archives Room of the DeSoto County Museum, located at 111 East Commerce Street in Hernando. The program will be presented in the adjacent old historic Presbyterian Church building owned by the museum, and which now serves the Iglesia Gracia Internacional congregation.
Dr. Clarence Christian, lead docent and volunteer at the DeSoto County Museum, is the main organizer of the event. A long-time Mid-South educator and social historian, emeritus professor of sociology who has taught at various colleges and universities, including Mississippi State University, and HBCU LeMoyne Owen College in Memphis— Christian was most recently named as the Historic DeSoto Foundation’s “Volunteer of the Year.” He says that “the program will honor the work and memory of a group of remarkable but unheralded women who not only ‘caught babies’ during birthing, but who also provided healthcare and more to their entire communities due to distance and racial disparities. Their skills and work were pivotal to both birthing and building this nation.”
Complementing this symposium is an ongoing display at the museum with photographs, funeral programs, and write-ups recognizing the social engineering and lifesaving efforts of DeSoto County “Granny Midwives.” The symposium itself will include personal testimonials from Jim Dockery, Sr., the 96-year-old son of a Cub Lake midwife; Mary Banks, daughter and granddaughter of a Hernando midwife; Alvin Bowser, nephew of a Bull Frog Corner midwife; Lottie Minor, granddaughter of a Motown midwife; and Michelle White Cole, daughter of Cora Lee White of Eudora, perhaps the last of the “Granny Midwives.”
“We are thrilled to be able to shed light on these remarkable women in our community who dedicated their lives to helping others during a time when African Americans were medically segregated and underserved,” says Robert Long, Curator of the Historic DeSoto County Museum. “This part of our history is an important part of the history of DeSoto County and the Mid-South.”
