All My Babies: A Midwife's Own Story is a 1953 educational film written, directed, and produced by George C. Stoney for the Georgia Department of Public Health. The film was intended to educate "granny midwives" in the Southern United States and promote collaboration between traditional midwifery and the modern health system. It follows the work of Mary Francis Hill Coley (1900–66), a prominent African American midwife from Albany, Georgia. Lauded for its groundbreaking depiction of childbirth and midwifery, All My Babies was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 2002 for its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance.

Plot

All My Babies follows Mary Francis Hill Coley, also called “Miss Mary,” an African American midwife in Albany, Georgia. It serves as a training tool for "granny midwives," a term applied to African American lay midwives delivering babies in the rural South. The film emphasizes the importance of hygiene and prenatal care. A doctor in the film discusses a case of infant death caused by poor sanitary conditions, reinforcing the need for sterility. Mary Coley exemplifies expert midwifery, guiding two mothers through successful deliveries. One mother has a history of healthy births, while the other, previously affected by miscarriages due to inadequate prenatal care, successfully delivers under Coley's supervision. The film portrays a transitional period in which state legal oversights began phasing out lay midwifery (also called direct-entry midwifery) in favor of regulated medical practices.

Production

George C. Stoney, an early documentary filmmaker,<sup>[2]</sup> developed an interest in midwifery from his own experiences growing up in the South and through his work as a Southern field representative, where he interacted closely with midwives. <sup>[3]</sup> His first collaboration with the Georgia Department of Public Health was Palmour Street, a documentary exploring mental health in Black families. Due to the film's success, the department determined that he was qualified to direct a film about midwives and initially granted him $20,000. The final production cost was $45,000, and filming took place between August 1951 and fall 1952.

Reception

The film received public criticism for its explicit depiction of childbirth. However, it was still screened for avant-garde audiences, including Cinema 16 and the inaugural Flaherty Film Seminar in 1953. It has been featured in exhibitions such as "Reclaiming Midwives: Stills from All My Babies" at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Scholars continue to examine the film's nuanced portrayal of midwifery, race, and health care success, and it remains an important artifact for discussions about medical ethics, racial equity, and documentary storytelling.

References

  • All My Babies: A Midwife's Own Story essay by Joshua Glick at National Film Registry [https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/all_babies.pdf]
  • All My Babies: A Midwife's Own Story essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 , pages 464-465 [https://books.google.com/books/about/America_s_Film_Legacy.html?id=deq3xI8OmCkC]
  • , including a digital viewing copy
  • Library of Congress. (n.d.). All my babies: A midwife’s own story. <nowiki>https://www.loc.gov/item/2017604960/</nowiki>
  • Glick, J. (n.d.). All my babies: A midwife’s own story. National Film Preservation Board. <nowiki>https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/all_babies.pdf</nowiki>
  • Muigai, W. (2019). “Something wasn’t clean”: Black midwifery, birth, and postwar medical education in All My Babies. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 93(1), 82–113. <nowiki>https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/720874/summary?casa_token=jAaNlCwcQgUAAAAA:PbIJ-LqL4G6LrzSbVIYpqIDJsXSAF3gYooAnKpxrwfP_rxr3wsgclYIoN_ze7KdY-GReEI5F4g</nowiki>
  • Jackson, L. (1987). The production of George Stoney’s film All My Babies: A Midwife's Own Story. Film History, 1(4), 367–392.
  • <nowiki>https://www.der.org/resources/guides/production-of-all-my-babies-lynne-jackson.pdf</nowiki>
  • Smith, S. L. (1999). Sick and tired of being sick and tired: Black women’s health activism in America, 1890–1950. University of Pennsylvania Press. <nowiki>https://books.google.com/books?id=wrCBNBZ8KxAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false</nowiki>