Black Mothers Look for Long-Lost Babies

Zella Jackson Price (left), hugging her 49-year-old daughter Malanie Gilmore
Zella Jackson Price (left), hugging her 49-year-old daughter Malanie Gilmore at their long-awaited reunion. Zella is one of 18 black women who were told decades ago that their babies had died soon after child-birth.

Eighteen black women who were told decades ago that their babies had died after birth are now suspecting their babies were taken by hospital officials.

St. Louis, MO – These suspicions arose from Zella Jackson Price, who said she was 26 years old in 1965 when she gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. Hours later, she was told that her daughter had died, but she never saw the baby’s body or a death certificate. Price said she gave birth to a baby girl born two months premature on Nov. 25, 1965. The baby weighed just over 2 pounds, but Price was able to hold the crying child after birth. A nurse took the baby away and came back later, only telling Zella the little girl was struggling to live and might not make it. Shortly thereafter, the nurse came back. The baby, she said, was dead.

However, Price’s daughter ended up in foster care home, only to resurface almost 50 years later.

Melanie Gilmore, who now lives in Eugene, Oregon, said that her foster parents always told her she was given up by her birth mother. Melanie Gilmore’s children recently tracked down her birth mother to mark their mother’s 50th birthday, and the search led them to 76-year-old Price, who lives in suburban St. Louis. The two women reunited in April after a DNA test confirmed they were mother and daughter. “She looks just like me,” said Price, a gospel singer and the mother of five other children. “We were so excited, it was a beautiful reunion that we’ll never forget,” said Zella Price.

After the reunion, Zella contacted Attorney Albert Watkins, who is asking city and state officials to investigate this matter. “For me not to be able to love on this child like I did with the others, sent me through a lot of emotions,” Price said. “But I’m so blessed to know that she is alive.”

As the news of Zella’s reunion with her daughter spread throughout the area Attorney Watkins began receiving calls from other women who wondered if their babies (who they were told had died), might have instead been taken from them.

Gussie Parker, 82, of St. Louis, heard Price’s story and was shocked by the similarities. Parker gave birth to a premature girl on Nov. 5, 1953. “Initially, my baby seemed fine, then a short time later, a nurse told me my baby had died. I never did see the baby or get a death certificate,” said Parker. “When you’re young and someone comes and tells you that your baby’s dead, in those days you just accepted it.”

Otha Mae Brand, 63, of St. Louis, gave birth to a girl in the spring of 1967. The child was two months premature and was hospitalized for 10 days, while Brand was sent home. Brand received a call from a nurse who told her of her baby’s death. “I had no reason not to believe them,” Brand said. “I got that heart-breaking phone call, and that was the last I heard.”

Now, she wonders… “I told my children, your sister may be alive,’” she said.

In the case of Brenda Stewart, said she was 16 and unmarried when she gave birth to a seemingly healthy girl on June 24, 1964. She cried as she recalled how a nurse told her the baby had died. “They told me I didn’t need a baby,” Stewart said. “I was too young to have a baby. They told me my parents didn’t need another mouth to feed.

“I know my baby’s not dead,” she added.

Watkins believes there could be many more parents and children to reunite, and that the babies were sold to adoptive parents. In a letter to Gov. Jay Nixon and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, Watkins said he suspects the hospital coordinated a scheme “to steal newborns of color for marketing in private adoption transactions.” Their stories, he said, “are too similar. Most of the births were in the mid-1950s to mid-1960s at Homer G. Phillips. All of the mothers were black and poor, mostly ages 15 to 20,” said Watkins.

At that time physician Mary Tillman (retired), was an intern who did a residency at Homer G. Phillips in the 1960s. Homer told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the hospital had protocols and record-keeping to track mothers and daughters. She never had any suspicions of wrongdoing, but said it should have been doctors, not nurses, who broke the news of death to mothers.

In each of these cases, a nurse (not a doctor) told the mothers their babies had died. No death certificates were issued, and none of the mothers were allowed to see their deceased infants, Watkins said. “They are mothers at the prime of their lives seeking answers to a lifelong question – what happened to my baby?” He plans to file a lawsuit, and said he has no idea who, or how many people, may have been responsible if babies were taken. He believes the infants were stolen and put up for adoption in an era when there were few adoption agencies catering to black (possibly married) couples. The women who have since come forward, all of whom gave birth between the 1950s and mid-1970s, are hoping to find their long-lost children.

Homer G. Phillips Hospital was St. Louis’s only hospital for African-Americans from 1937 until 1955, and continued to serve the black community of St. Louis until it closed in 1979. While in operation, it was one of the few hospitals in the United States where black Americans could train as doctors and nurses, and by 1961, Homer G. Phillips Hospital had trained the largest number of black doctors and nurses in the world. It closed as a full-service hospital in 1979.