Today we revisit one of the most popular programs from our archives. Mother George was a black midwife who practiced her art in a small southeastern Idaho town for 40 years. When she died around 1919, the women dressing her for burial discovered that she was man.
Lee Cantwell set out to answer the questions occasioned by this historical fact: Why did Mother George masquerade as a woman for four decades? How would a black man of that era have learned the skills of midwifery and surgery? Not finding any historical records that could answer these and other questions, Cantwell turned to historical fiction. The result is “Mother George, the Midwife Who Shocked Grays Lake.” This program was first broadcast in 2011.
