The Hands That Held Us: How Black Wellness Has Always Been Built
Written by: The Collective
February 6th, 2026
Imagine a 400-mile stretch of muddy roads, zero hospitals, and thousands of families in need. Now imagine one woman with a medical bag and a mission.
This isn’t a movie script — it was the daily life of Maude Callen.
As we mark Black History Month, WeWellness is looking back at the Catchers. We are also reflecting on the Builders — the people who ensured we are here today.
Before healthcare was an industry, it was an inheritance.
Across the South, Granny Midwives were more than birth workers — they were the community’s primary health architects. Women like Maude Callen and Mary Francis Hill Coley didn’t just deliver babies. They provided health education. Maude and Mary introduced prevention and ensured continuity in the middle of medical deserts. They were clinicians, counselors, advocates, and data-keepers long before those roles had names.
In many ways, they were the original community health workers and doulas. They were community health workers trained through lived experience. Their cultural knowledge and deep accountability to the people they served were essential.
But this care was also a form of resistance.
During the era of the Night Doctors, medical students illegally harvested Black bodies for study. The home became the only safe hospital we had. Our ancestors chose the midwife not because they rejected medicine, but because she was a Protector. She insisted you be treated as a human being—worthy of dignity, care, and life.
These stories were not passed down to instill fear. They were passed down to sharpen awareness, preserve memory, and keep us alive.
“Medical distrust” is often labeled that way today. Nevertheless, it is inherited wisdom. This is a learned response to systems that repeatedly refused to listen, believe, or protect us. It is discernment shaped by experience, not resistance to care. That history didn’t disappear. It echoes today in unequal pain treatment and dismissed symptoms. Bias, rather than care, shapes many clinical decisions. Many night-shift doctors and providers still witness these realities quietly at the bedside.
Our communities have never been closed to healing. As a collective, we have always practiced it—through care, presence, ritual, and responsibility to one another.
We have always been deeply open to medicine, treatment, care, and learned to resist something different. It was not healthcare itself. It was systems that required harm, silence, or erasure to get it.
Families protected one another by sharing knowledge across generations. They chose trusted healers and blended clinical care with cultural wisdom. They built safety where the network would not. As one elder midwife once said, “We didn’t just catch babies — we caught families, and we stayed.”
By the 1990s, this spirit of protection evolved into what we now know as the Reproductive Justice Movement. Coined by twelve visionary Black women, reproductive justice rephrased wellness as more than access to care. It affirmed the right to live in safe, supportive communities; recognized the right to parent with dignity. It emphasized thriving across the entire life course.
What we lost along the way wasn’t just midwifery.
We lost continuity.
As healthcare industrialized, care became fragmented. The hands that once stayed through pregnancy, birth, recovery, and early life were not lost—they were displaced. Systems focused on episodes instead of outcomes pushed them aside. Transactions replaced relationships. Efficiency took precedence over long-term wellbeing.
Now, Planters
Today, when we talk about Black-owned birthing centers, doulas, and community-based care, we aren’t trailing a trend. We are returning to our roots.
At WeWellness, we stand on the shoulders of the Catchers, the Midwives, and the Protectors. We carry this lineage onward by building community-led systems. Community health workers and peer navigators anchor continuity. Lived experience informs ethical AI. Care doesn’t end at discharge; it stays rooted in real lives, real families, and real futures.
We are building the future they imagined — from the seat of a buggy on a muddy South Carolina road.
Rooted, Not Random is a WeWellness series. It honors the people, practices, and systems that carried us. They continue to shape the future of community health.
References:
1. Our inheritance. (2026). Blkbry.com. https://www.blkbry.com/post/our-inheritance-the-legacy-of-the-granny-midwives-and-the-reproductive-justice-movement
2. Laskey, M. (2021, August 18). Fear of the Dark: The Night Doctors in Folk Belief and Historical Reality. Cvltnation. https://cvltnation.com/fear-of-the-dark-the-night-doctors-in-folk-belief-and-historical-reality/
3. Maude E. Callen, Nurse, and Midwife born. (2024, November 8). African American Registry. https://aaregistry.org/story/maude-e-callen-nurse-midwife-born/
4. Nguyen, T. M. (2021, February 9). In Honor of Black History Month We Spotlight the Granny Midwives and Their Legacy. Alameda Health System. https://www.alamedahealthsystem.org/honoring-the-granny-midwives-and-their-legacy/