31/10/2025
✨ Continuing the journey through Black Makers of History, we honour three extraordinary changemakers whose legacies have shaped the perinatal world, though sadly not always in their lifetimes.
Henrietta Lacks was a young Black mother whose cancer cells - taken without her consent in 1951 - became the foundation of countless medical breakthroughs. Known as HeLa cells, they’ve been used in everything from cancer research to vaccine development. Yet her story is also one of exploitation, raising urgent questions about consent, ethics, and racial injustice in medicine.
Her legacy reminds us that Black bodies have too often been used without respect or recognition. Today, her descendants advocate for justice and ethical reform. Henrietta’s story is a call to honour the humanity behind scientific progress - and to ensure that no one is invisible in the systems meant to care for us.
Mary Francis Hill Coley, known as “Miss Mary,” was a legendary Black midwife who delivered over 3,000 babies in Georgia during segregation. She was featured in the 1953 documentary All My Babies, which became a training tool for medical professionals. Her work bridged traditional midwifery and modern medicine, all while navigating racial exclusion.
Miss Mary’s story is one of quiet resistance and deep community care. She reminds us that expertise doesn’t always wear a white coat - and that Black women have always been at the heart of birth justice, even when history tried to forget them.
In the 1970s, two Black mothers, Kathleen Locke & Coca Clarke, led a direct action in Manchester, occupying the West Indian Community Centre to demand nursery facilities for local families. Their protest was a powerful intersection of race, gender, and class activism - and it worked.
Their story is rarely told, but it’s foundational. They remind us that parenting is political, and that Black mothers have always fought for the resources their communities deserve. Their legacy lives on in every grassroots campaign that centres care and justice.
