Black Women as Health Pioneers in Miami, Florida
A collage of images of midwives from Florida and health pioneers Doris Ison and Jessie Price. Retrieved from Florida Memory, CSPAN, Miami’s Community News, and Community Health of South Florida, Inc (CHI).
By Nadege Green
Nadege Green, founder of Black Miami-Dade, an emerging digital storytelling and history platform that resists the erasure of Miami's Black past, offers insight on the pioneering leadership of Black women in the health field in Miami, Florida.
Black women are pioneers in the health field in Miami, Florida and historically played critical roles in positive health outcomes for the community while fighting against racism— yet their contributions are largely forgotten or made invisible in the present landscape even while their legacies live on in the form of local community health clinics for the poor and in the descendants of the communities they care for.
In honor of the invaluable work done by Black women health pioneers of Miami-Dade County we are spotlighting and remembering their contributions.
Midwives
“Black midwives played an important role in early Miami delivering babies for Black and white families.”
Sterile procedures taught to midwives for licensing in Miami, Florida. 1935 (circa). State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. Photo Credit: Hicks. Photo Source: Florida Memory.
When Miami was founded in 1896 and through the early 1900s, women who gave birth relied on midwives to deliver and care for their children. Black midwives played an important role in early Miami delivering babies for Black and white families. Albertha Adessa Turner moved to Miami in 1906 from Tampa where she learned midwifery from her mother who was also a midwife. In Miami, she delivered thousands of babies for mothers of all backgrounds, Black, Italian, Cuban and Jewish for some forty years.
However it was working as a midwife in Miami’s segregated Black community that led to her activism around health disparities for Black women in what was then called Colored Town, today known as Overtown. Turner also lived in the community. When the 1918 flu swept through Miami, white people who got sick were treated at Miami City Hospital (now Jackson Health System). However, Black people were not allowed to access all-white health facilities and were largely left with at-home treatments with no modern health facilities in their communities.
After the 1918 flu pandemic, Turner was one of many Black women who launched fundraisers and supported the creation of the first Black hospital in Miami, Christian Hospital. Many of the Black midwives in Miami’s history did not have their names and stories preserved in historical records, but there’s no question they were here and they did crucial work around maternal health in early Miami.
Doris Ison
“Ison would go on to be a fierce advocate for public health in South Dade and an all around community leader. She cared deeply about the poor health outcomes for Black and Mexican farmworkers in South Dade.”
Photo of Community Health of South Florida, Inc. (CHI) founder, Doris Ison. Photo Source: Community Health of South Florida, Inc. Website.
Doris Ison was born in 1908 in the Bahamas. Her family moved to Florida City, an area in South Miami-Dade, when she was three. There were no schools for Black children in South Dade when she was coming up, so she, like many Black kids (older elementary through high school ages) worked picking beans and tomatoes in the agricultural fields.
Ison experienced the medical racism of segregated Miami-Dade when her mom passed away from intestinal flu. Ison was a pre-teen and the oldest of six kids then. There was no doctor in Florida City to treat her mom and by the time one would be able to come from Homestead, the nearest city, it was too late. “I’ve always felt my mother could have been saved if only I had a hospital to take her to,” she later told a reporter.
Ison would go on to be a fierce advocate for public health in South Dade and an all around community leader. She cared deeply about the poor health outcomes for Black and Mexican farmworkers in South Dade.
When a migrant clinic finally opened in South Dade, three years after Martin Luther King Jr. 's death, she and Mexican community leaders agreed to name it the Martin Luther King Jr. Clinica Campesina. Ison served as a board member.
Community Health of South Florida, Inc (CHI) around that time was established making it the second community health center in Miami-Dade. They took over managing the migrant clinic that served Black and Mexican farmworkers and Ison became a board member there. Ison remained active continuing to advocate for better health facilities because too many people died trying to make the trip from South Dade all the way to Jackson Hospital in the City of Miami.
CHI built a comprehensive health center in Goulds in 1971 in part because of the advocacy of Doris Ison. In 1976 the center was renamed for her - the Doris Ison Health Center. She was 67 at the time. Residents of South Miami-Dade who have ever used this comprehensive health center in Goulds, have Doris Ison to thank—a Black woman and a former farmworker.
Jessie Trice
Image of Jessie Price holding a baby. Photo courtesy of Nadege Green.
Trice moved back into her home after having it fixed because she was not one to be deterred at home or in her professional life. In 1970, Trice, who specialized in pediatric nursing, was working for the Dade County Health Department when she was invited to Washington D.C. to take part in the White House Conference on Children and Youth. Trice was the vice-chair of a forum in the conference that focused on how children perceive themselves from birth until they enter school.
While she was already nationally recognized, it’s her work in Miami as the executive director of the Black-owned Economic Health Opportunity Center that really cemented her legacy as an advocate for accessible health care for the poor. In the 1980s the center opened its first modern clinic in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood. While overseeing the center, Trice would go on to create one of the first long-term residential treatment centers in the country for pregnant women who were addicted to drugs.
“While overseeing the center, Trice would go on to create one of the first long-term residential treatment centers in the country for pregnant women who were addicted to drugs.”
Women from all over Miami-Dade and around the country would come to this treatment center because there were so few available to pregnant women. Trice also expanded healthcare in Miami-Dade public schools that served Black children. For her, Black infant mortality, prenatal care and childhood health were key issues to uplift in Miami-Dade. And when the HIV/AIDS epidemic emerged in Miami’s Black communities, Trice was at the forefront of providing comprehensive care at her centers at a time when many health professionals would barely treat these patients humanely, especially poor Black ones.
Her holistic care for the poor in Miami-Dade became a model nationally. She served as president of the National Association of Community Health Centers and received numerous accolades for her community-centered health care model. By the time Trice retired in the early 90s she grew the health center from two locations to 10 centers in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Miami-Dade. Today those centers, now 13, are named for her—The Jessie Trice Community Health System.
Nadege Green is a researcher, writer and community archivist based in Miami. Her work centers the lived experiences of Black people in South Florida. She is the founder of Black Miami-Dade, an emerging digital storytelling and history platform that resists the erasure of Miami's Black past.