Nurses and Mammies

The term "mammy," a variation on "mommy" or "mama," was used in the South to describe a black woman who cared for a slaveholder's children. There was often a strong bond between mammies and white children. The word was also used by slave children to refer to their own mothers or caretakers. Because many slave mothers were sold away from their young children, mammies often cared for all of a plantation's children regardless of bloodline.

The size of the homestead or the wealth of the slave owner determined the extent of a mammy's responsibilities. She might care solely for the white children or for all of the manor's children. On smaller plantations with fewer slaves, she might also serve as housekeeper, cook, seamstress, washerwoman, and caregiver with a full roster of chores to complete each day. Callie Williams, born and raised a slave in Alabama, recalled that "while mammy was tendin' de babies, she had to spin cotton and she was supposed to spin two 'cuts' a day. Four 'cuts' was a hard day's work" (Born in Slavery, Alabama Narratives, vol. 1, p. 426). On homesteads with an abundance of slaves, there could be two mammies—one to care for the slaveholder's children and another for slave children. These women were usually older and no longer useful in the fields, or barren, and had the help of slave boys and girls who were either too young to help with crops or were being trained as personal servants. The use of mammies allowed slaveholders to send new or young mothers back into the fields to work.

During the slavery era the term nurse or nursemaid referred to someone who helped out with the very young and the sick. These young people (both male and female) were trained either by their elders or white doctors to administer simple remedies for common ailments. Other "nurses" had no training whatsoever, as the term was synonymous with caregiver and could refer to slave girls and boys as young as five or six years old. George Womble, born in 1843, was taken in by his owner after both his parents were sold. At about the age of seven, his "job" was to wait tables, help with the house cleaning, and to act as nursemaid to three young children belonging to the master. George had a reputation as an "excellent house boy" and so was "often hired out to the other white ladies of the community to take care of their children and to do their housework" (Born in Slavery, Georgia Narratives, vol. 4, part 4, p. 179).

Phyllis Petite, of Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, was also a nursemaid:

I just played around until I was about six years old, I reckon, then they put me up at the Big House with my mammy to work…. I done a whole lot of sweeping and minding the baby. The baby was only about six months old … and I used to stand by the cradle and rock it all day. And when I quit I went to sleep right by the cradle sometimes before my mammy would come and get me. (Born in Slavery, Oklahoma Narratives, vol. 13, p. 237)

Wet nurses were different from nursemaids and mammies, though the terms were sometimes used interchangeably. Wet nurses were lactating slave women who nursed babies, both black and white, though the white children always came first. Sarah Louise Augustus, of Raleigh, North Carolina, recalled that her grandmother Sarah McDonald, who bore fifteen children of her own, served as wet nurse for the plantation of George McDonald. "She was called black mammy because she wet nursed so many white children. In slavery times she nursed all babies hatched on her master's plantation and kept it up after the war as long as she had children" (Born in Slavery, North Carolina Narratives, vol. 11, part 1, p. 54).

The story of Emiline Waddell, as told to and recited by an interviewer, is an example of the bond that black mammies and nurses often formed with their white masters' families. Emiline, born in 1826 in Georgia, "was a faithful old black mammy … and refused her freedom at the close of the war as she wanted to stay and raise 'ol' Massa's chilluns' … She was nursing her sixth generation in the Waddell family at the time of her death. Even to that generation there was a close tie between the Southern child and his or her black mammy" (Born in Slavery, Arkansas Narratives, vol. 2, part 7, p. 13).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1938. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Alabama Narratives, vol. 1; Arkansas narratives, vol. 2, part 7; Georgia Narratives, vol. 4, part 4; Indiana Narratives, vol. 5; North Carolina Narratives, vol. 11, part 1; Oklahoma Narratives, vol. 13. Available from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html.

Sydnor, Charles Sackett. Slavery in Mississippi. New York and London: Appleton-Century, 1933. (Repr., Gloucester, MA: P. Smith, 1965.)

                                      Nelson Rhodes