“It was his tap on the shoulder that awakened them as the train neared their stop and alerted them to their new receiving city. He and other colored porters were men in red caps and white uniforms, but they functioned as the midwives of the Great Migration, helping the migrants gather themselves and disembark at the station and thus delivering to the world a new wave of newcomers with each arriving train.” Isabel Wilkerson, THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: THE EPIC STORY OF AMERICA’S GREAT MIGRATION 1 (p. 294)
Isabel Wilkerson’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: THE EPIC STORY OF AMERICA’S GREAT MIGRATION, chronicles the migration of Blacks out of the South from 1915 to 1970. Escaping the oppressive lifestyle of the Jim Crow South where voting was repressed, wages were paltry, working conditions were often inhumane, education was purposely second-class, and the freedom granted by the Emancipation Proclamation was anything but, over 6 million Black Americans migrated to parts elsewhere to seek a better life. The exit was predominantly via the train and explains why the concentration of settlements were along the east coast (Atlantic train routes), the Midwest (train routes to Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin), and some to Texas and beyond to the west coast.
Six million! That is an astonishing number yet when you consider the conditions that they were fleeing, attempts to reset their lives and have an enhanced, fairer life for their children made perfect sense.
Now, why the quote at the beginning? I found it to be quite ironic that the Black porters, train employees there to assist passengers on their journey on the trains, could be considered by the author to be midwives. They are guiding the passengers and letting them know when their stops are coming up so they can disembark into their “new” world.
As a medical professional and retired pediatrician, I have always considered midwives solely in the context of nurturing pregnancies and delivering babies. They provide an invaluable service and are respected members of the healthcare team.
Is it a stretch to consider train porters as midwives? I don’t think so. In the setting of the trains transporting Blacks from the South to the North, porters could help with the exhausting journey and guide them through the necessary steps. These travelers were frightened and anxious and any assistance was welcome.
The dictionary expands the medical definition of midwife to include “one that helps to produce or bring forth something.” This is precisely what the porters were doing, helping these nervous souls in the most consequential trip of their lives.
There is additional irony that the folks helping the Black migrants were also Black. Blacks in the South were incredibly self-reliant and always cognizant of the station in life and in keeping with Wilkerson’s observation that Black porters were the ones facilitating the transition from life in the Jim Crow South to the dreams of the North.
As I listened to this passage in the book and detailed it above, I realized that we should all be midwives. While few of us will take on the awesome task of aiding childbirth (or should we), we can all use our human talents to nurture our fellow man. Our role as citizens is to care for and care about others. We all can be the one that helps to produce or bring forth something of meaning to others. Our common humanity punctuated with empathy, humility and sincerity makes us the perfect midwives in the voyages of our lives.
Being a porter on a train should be no different than being a porter to others. Helping them get on the train, helping with the luggage, letting them know when their station is coming up, and helping them get off the train are perfect comparisons to what we should be doing everyday with others. We should be helping people get on the train of life headed to an enhanced outcome, help with their personal and emotional luggage that can drag them down, showing them the guideposts along the way that might be helpful, and aiding their move to independence that will boost them in the future.
Ms. Wilkerson equated the porters on the trains headed north to midwives. I agree. We have the glorious opportunity to help others each and every day enhance their lives and in exchange, brighten and improve ours. If every day is a new day, every encounter with our fellow man should manifest in a new birth, a new awakening, the chance to bring something forth.
Being a midwife is not the sole task of childbirth. We all can enjoy the privilege.
- Wilkerson I. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group; 2011. 641 pp.