The Legacy of My Grandmothers: Bringing Their Voices to Light

There are long held secrets on both sides of my family. One I’ve known about for a long time but hadn’t readily understood the whole story in context. The other I learned of in October 2023. It’s taken me several months to piece elements together and come to a horrifying conclusion.

I do want to alert you that what I’m about to share may be too graphic for some in painting these terrible narratives. They derive of a time, rising up through poverty and lack of choice. But it could just as well be told in present times and for what else could come if we allow it.

I’m going to disclose these family secrets here. Why now? Why publicly? It’s a time sensitive matter of life and death. I feel a responsibility. These tragic stories need be told and the women involved—my grandmothers—and others like them honored. My 92-year-old mother is urging me to do so. One of the stories is about her mother.

I never knew either of my grandmothers. They were names to me with no attachment. But they’ve come alive as I’ve researched their lives and deaths. I want to say their names and grieve for them, what they went through and the generational trauma living in the family line.

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Jewel Nadine Whitley, née Smithart

My maternal grandmother went by her nickname Blackie. She was born in Leesburg, Mississippi in 1912, one of six children. The family had been there for generations doing well for those times. But in 1913 they picked up and fled due to serious encounters and death threats from the Ku Klux Klan because they employed Black people at their businesses, perhaps a story for another time. They landed in east Texas where eventually Blackie met her husband, Carl. They made their life in the still tiny towns of Jacksonville and then Palestine. My mother Sue was born in 1932, an only child. Times were exceedingly hard in those rural communities, more so than elsewhere. There was little to no work. If there was, pay was a pittance. Blackie worked at a laundry. Carl’s work in those early days is unknown. My mother remembers going to bed hungry much of the time. They lived below the poverty line. My mother told me she thought it was normal—everyone living a hand-to-mouth existence. No future.

Imagine worrying through the day, kept up at night with how to make ends meet, what to scrape together to make a meal, which meal(s) to skip that day, how to keep your growing child in clothes. What if something happened and there’s no money to make it right and nonexistent resources? Maybe you know those who are in those kinds of situations or have been there yourself.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s this next part that so twists me up inside. My mother doesn’t know when what I’m going to tell you next occurred. She only found out at all because her favorite aunt BB told her sometime after Blackie passed.

Have you heard those old stories of women aborting their pregnancy with a coat hanger and didn’t think they were real? I know in my heart Blackie only undertook that unspeakable action because she felt family circumstances held no other choice. Step into her life discovering another child was on the way: the desperation, sadness, hopelessness, absolute despair, guilt. This was not an act taken lightly. I can only imagine the courage it took. Where did it happen? How? I have a sense she was alone in the bathroom, no help then or in the aftermath…a secret she long kept to herself until she disclosed it to her sister BB. I stand in her shoes in that time and it tears me up.

Whether her uterus managed to heal or it was permanently destroyed, we don’t know. But at some point, Blackie began to feel unwell, which probably developed over time. However, by age 36 it was clear it was something serious. We don’t know if she went to a doctor at the outset. There was probably no money. Or did she wait until her pain and bleeding was unbearable? At age 38 Blackie was finally diagnosed with uterine cancer.

Did the way the abortion occurred cause the cancer? It is very rare for uterine cancer to appear in one so young. If the disease were to present, most experienced it after age 50. I tend to believe there was a link…the physical and emotional wounding, and stress likely took its toll. My mother told me Blackie was emotionally absent.

When I think about the treatment and its side effects Blackie endured, I shudder. Radium capsules were placed in her uterine cavity. My mother remembers seeing them, a string tail at one end to pull them out. In my mind I saw a teenaged girl-sized tampon-like apparatus. They were unsuccessful. I’m sure it added to her pain by burning her up inside. Blackie suffered another four years, passing at age 42.

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Emma Mae Woody, née Heard

My father Glenn was a motherless child born into the Dustbowl in the Texas panhandle on January 11, 1932 in Dalhart, the youngest of seven children. The only thing we knew about Emma was her death from undisclosed complications of childbirth. Nothing else. My father never even saw his mother’s face. The only photograph that exists—faded sepia—is of Emma walking down a barren dirt road to nowhere. She’s unrecognizable, the image taken from such a distance. It’s undated. In genealogy charts researched for us by a friend, we learned she was born in October in 1887 in Arkansas, no town or county given…and nothing whatsoever available about her family line. We don’t even know who her people were.

My knowledge base changed when my cousin David and his wife came to visit my mother and me in October 2023. David had been extensively researching the Woody family genealogy and brought with him a large laminated family tree. He also said he’d come across Emma’s death certificate and gave me a copy. He noted it was exceptional due to the notes regarding death and attendance were handwritten by the doctor whose signature was indecipherable. The document, now close to 100 years old, is washed out and hard to read. Thankfully, the handwriting is much larger than the type. The first thing that popped out to me in contributing causes was “retained placenta.” What is that? None of us present had heard of this. For the time, I set the family tree and death certificate aside as we returned to visiting.

When I pulled it out again a few weeks later, I first researched “retained placenta”.  

Delivery of the placenta is vital in preventing severe complications from developing. In normal circumstances, the placenta naturally detaches on its own and is delivered from the uterus. However, when the placenta fails to detach and be delivered within 30 minutes after the delivery of the baby, it is referred to as a retained placenta. Sometimes, an entire placenta is retained while other times, only part of a placenta is retained. Both can pose serious risks to the mother. The entire placenta must be delivered.

If it’s not removed in a timely manner, the risks are: serious infection, hemorrhage, internal bleeding, damage to the uterus, sepsis leading to septic shock.

I began to feel queasy. I returned to the death certificate. Under cause the doctor had written “septicemia”—the medical term for blood poisoning. Then I read the doctor’s full statement on contributing causes: Retained placenta. Delivery unattended on account of bad roads.

I understand it was common to have home births at that time, many without physicians or even a midwife. Of course, home births happen today but most have a back-up plan if things go awry with the birth. There was a gap of seven years between my dad and the twins closest in birth. He had four brothers and two sisters. But this tells me my grandfather and all siblings still lived at home then.

Did no one seek help? I looked at the death certificate again. The doctor noted he attended Emma from January 25 until February 18. That’s the day she died at age 45. My father was born January 11! She received NO treatment until 2 weeks after the birth and hung on 37 days before passing. There can be no doubt Emma suffered horribly. I don’t care what the roads were like! I would have gone for help. Wouldn’t you? Two weeks?

I was enraged. Underneath is a deep sadness. I cannot relay this story without crying or getting a catch in my voice and feel my anger arising. I cannot think about this much before I begin to spiral.

All my father’s immediate family have been long gone. I started sending emails out to cousins asking if they’d ever heard any stories from their parents about Emma growing up or if anyone had any photos of her. Nothing. It’s as though she’s a ghost, any trace of her swept away with the exception of that telling death certificate.

I feel like Emma is reaching up from the grave, wanting someone to know that she mattered.

In my mind, what happened was criminal negligence committed by my grandfather James Woody. There’s a small chance I wouldn’t have hopped on this accusation and left it to ignorance. But there’s more. When my dad was a toddler my grandfather farmed him out to a childless couple down the road only too happy to take him in. When my father was age four, the couple asked my grandfather if they could adopt him. It’s quite likely his first family didn’t come see him. My father had no memory of that happening.

When my grandfather showed up at the couple’s house he was loaded for bear. The husband sent my father to hide under the bed. I can imagine the yelling going on outside giving warning. My grandfather killed the husband, beating him about the head. His fists held brass knuckles. Then he took my father back to his birth home. He was never charged. The claim was made that when the husband opened the door, he had a rifle.

My father suffered from the trauma of witnessing that incident his entire life, being motherless, and ongoing abuse by his father. It affected his life and those of us close to him. All of this could possibly have been avoided had Emma received timely adequate care for the retained placenta. Most survive when it’s addressed as required.

My grandfather was 60 when my dad was born. There was a first family also with seven children. Their mother Luiza died at age 40. My cousin and I had a consultation about the dates Luiza gave birth to their last child Margarett, and the perplexing length of time from the birth and then the deaths of mother and child. David said, “From the birth/death date proximity of Margarett, I’m led to assume complications from childbirth led to death of mother and child.  However, I have no factual support on that, only supposition.  It appears possible that both JM Woody’s wives may have died in relation to childbirth.” He could find no death certificates. I’m glad I never knew this grandfather. He died alone in his cabin by his own hand at age 80—two weeks before I was born.

My father passed in April 2022. I would not have told this story prior to his passing, even if I’d known it. He would not have been able to endure it.

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One might say that was so long ago, a frequent occurrence. Such things happen. I’m saying, it didn’t have to be that way—ever. It boils down to women’s status. Have times changed? I was aghast with the results I uncovered about maternal mortality rates. Not all those years ago…today.

We’ve been in a maternal healthcare crisis all along—and it’s getting worse by the year. How can we be thought of as one of the richest countries when the US is 55^th in the world in maternal mortality—as designated by a 2020 WHO report—way up there with developing countries, the worst of any developed nation? And the CDC documents Women of Color are nearly three times likelier than White women to die during childbirth. We don’t take care of our own.

Women have the right to live safe, empowered lives making decisions that are right for them and their families…and have the support to do so. This is not a political statement. This is reality. We cannot return to the Dark Ages. We must go toward The Light.

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