TULSA, Okla. — A Tulsa woman is honoring Black Wall Street history and her own family's roots while giving expecting mothers the option of midwifery.
Expecting mother Jade Amos told 2 News she and her partner educated themselves on Black maternity health early on and knew they wanted a black midwife to help welcome their first baby.
"Just being a Black woman I feel like nobody else really understands you other than another Black woman," she said.
Amos describes finding Community Midwife Owon Johnson as divine timing. Johnson, newly graduated from apprenticeship, initially worried about pursuing her dream job in Oklahoma, which has stern regulations on midwifery outside of hospitals.
"Right now, midwifery is private pay only," Johnson said. "And so, we have to work with any and everybody's budget because me as a midwife and doing what I know I'm supposed to do, I don't like turning people away for money."
A partnership between Tulsa Birth Equity Initiative and consultant Priscilla McFolling hopes to change some of those policies and bring more Black and Indigenous midwives to the area.
"We have lower rates of cesarean section and higher rates of vaginal birth (with midwifery available in communities)," McFolling said. "And if you have low c-sections then you have low rates of infections. We have better outcomes for birth weights for the infants, and we just have overall better satisfaction with the client."
The CDC reports Black women suffer a maternal mortality rate three times higher than white women. Statistics also point to lack of access to birthing alternatives like midwifery, which was once mainstream in minority communities.
Before the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre forced out thousands of Black residents and neighborhoods, midwifery was far more common. The vast majority of midwives in the area, like Canzaty Smith, were Black. Since Smith's death in 1977, though, there hasn't been a Black midwife based in Green Country - until Johnson.
"It was important for me to give back to that part of my family to say that I recognize where I come from," Johnson told 2 News.
Johnson descends from midwife matriarchs who worked in Black communities across northeast Oklahoma, including Greenwood, that inspired her business's name: Greenwood Midwifery.
She hopes as her career grows, so too will the number of local midwives who look like her.
"I think that's a part of my personal journey. I think that's what God wanted for me, was to open that way," Johnson said. "So yeah, I'm here and I'm ready."
Johnson added she's already helped deliver about a hundred babies since her apprenticeship.
She said one of her biggest goals for her career is to eventually open a birthing center on historic Greenwood Avenue.
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