Black women in America die from pregnancy-related causes at two to three times the rate of white women. That gap does not close with income. It does not close with education. It persists across class lines, credential lines, ZIP code lines. What it tracks — stubbornly, faithfully — is race. The research is not ambiguous. The system is not neutral. And the midwifery model — which centers relationship, continuity, full personhood, and community — is one of the most evidence-based responses we have.

I am particularly committed to building the Black midwifery workforce in the South — a region that has been treated as a cautionary tale for so long that people have forgotten it is also a site of extraordinary resistance. Black midwives in the South did not disappear because they weren't excellent. They were displaced — by licensure laws, by hospital systems, by economic pressures that had nothing to do with the quality of their care. Recovering that tradition is not nostalgia. It is strategy.

In past research, I documented the experiences of Black women in Memphis who had lost infants. I was in their homes, with their families. I was listening. What I heard broke something open in me — and rebuilt it into something I have been working from ever since.