Shining Light and Sharing Stories on Black Maternal Health

The Rev. Dr. Valerie Oliver-Durrah, president and founder of the Neighborhood Technical Assistance Clinic, helped put a spotlight on Black maternal health when she co-organized Brooklyn’s first Black Maternal Health Awareness Walk, Apr. 11, in downtown Brooklyn. Below is her opening statement that kicked off the event at Borough Hall.

I am so proud to share and to stand with you today alongside my daughter, Brooke Remel Oliver-Durrah—yes, I say all of her names— as hope visionaries of Brooklyn’s first ever Black Maternal Health Awareness Walk. This walk was inspired by the early vision of Concrete Communications [Marketing Agency].

It is because of that inspiration and through the power of collaboration that we proudly stand here today, walking in partnership with incredible organizers, Brooklyn Collaborative, Downtown Brooklyn Partnerships, City Point, and most importantly, walking in honor of the thousands of Black women who have endured, survived, and continue to fight against maternal health disparities every single day. This is more than a walk. This is a witness. This is a movement. This is history in motion.

This morning, we will hear from many speakers, experts, and leaders in this work, and later today, at our Resource Activation Zone at City Point, we will have access to tools and resources that community partners are ready to talk with you about. This moment going forward, as an ordained minister, I like to think of this day in two parts. This morning is like the Old Testament, full of truth-telling and guidance and hard facts. This afternoon is like the New Testament, a space for transformation and for solutions and for action. But before we move forward, we want to start our morning the right way, with intention, with prayer, and yes, music.

It is my joy to welcome our very own Violin Diva [Charrisha Rowe], who will minister to us in her own beautiful way, through music. And to be followed by the Rev. Dr. Karen Daughtry, pastor of the House of the Lord Church, and First Lady of the Rev. Dr. Herbert Daughtry.
And finally, I want to extend my deepest gratitude to ABC-TV, and to one of their very own reporters, Crystal Cranmore, a journalist, storyteller in her own right, whose heart for our community is as powerful as her voice. Cris is back home in Brooklyn today to tell our story.

The story of how one Black woman-led nonprofit, it’s my organization, in partnership with so many extraordinary women-leaders created the first ever Black Maternal Health Awareness Walk in the history of Brooklyn. Crystal, we are so proud to have you with us today.
And last, but not least, in my opening statement, I would be remiss if I did not introduce the chairman of my board of directors, the Rev. Sylvia Gill-Kinard, Esquire. – Yvette Moore

Testimonies of a Violin Diva

Charisa Dowe Rouse, aka the ViolinDiva, is a noted progressive jazz artist who has collaborated with Wynton Marsalis, Savion Glover, Quincy Jones, Kim Burrell, Common, Diana Krall, Musiq Soulchild, William McDowell, and more. She shared a liturgical offering of string music and song at Maternal Health Awareness Walk event in Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. She also shared her own sobering story of childbirth.

“On May 14, 2016, my son was two weeks overdue. He tells me now—he’s eight now—he tells me, ‘Mom, I just didn’t want to come out. I was enjoying it in there.’ Which is used to explain why he’s still attached to my hip all the time. I went to the hospital to be induced. They gave me a ribbon, nothing they gave me Pitocin, nothing. They gave me the hardcore stuff, nothing. Twenty-seven hours later, I was only one and three-quarters centimeters dilated. And with every contraction, his heart started to fail. They said, ‘Girl, we’ve got to go in an do an emergency C-section.’ I said, ‘OK.’ I wasn’t ready for it, but my mother talked me off the ledge. She said, ‘Baby girl, you’re a mom now. It’s time to go into mommy mode. It’s not about you anymore. It’s about this baby.’ I just lost it.

“God is awesome, because I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into. C-sections are often mistaken as the easy way out. They are not. They strap you down to the table. They remind you of Jesus on the cross. They strap you down to the table. All of your business is out in the streets. And they cut you from hip to hip. I remember talking to the anesthesiologist and telling him, ‘Hey, something’s wrong. I don’t feel right inside.’ He said, ‘No, it’s fine. I haven’t even given you the good stuff yet. I said, ‘No, something is very, very wrong. I’m about to… I’m about to…’ And they pulled out my son, and I heard them scream, ‘It’s a boy!’
“Then the room went black.

“My sister was on the other side of the door, and she says that my heart stopped three times, and they had to bring me back. All she could do was hit the ground and start to pray. I woke up 16 hours later. Normal is about four, maybe three. I woke up 16 hours later not knowing what had happened, not understanding why, and to this day no one in the hospital could tell me what went wrong. But I know that I am here, by the grace of God. He had a greater plan for me. He had a greater plan for my baby boy, who is the light of my life, a joy. …
“If it can happen to me, if it can happen to Serena Williams, it can happen to any of us. And in what I still believe is the greatest country in the world, it’s a disparity and a shame that Black maternal health is what it is. It’s literally taking your life in your hands, just giving someone else life in this country in 2025. So, we have to do something to change it. But again, I stand here because of the grace of God and the goodness of God. And I want to sing that song for you today.”

Deputy Boro Prez Kim Council Shares Her Perilous Story

The Rev. Kimberly Council is Deputy Borough President of Brooklyn, NY. Ms. Council welcomed event participants to Borough Hall—and share her own perilous story of birthing a child. Her testimony is below.

As I was listening to Charisa [Dowe Rouse, the ViolinDiva] tell her story, I thought about my own; because not only am I the deputy borough president, not only am I assistant pastor of Greater Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, I’m a Black woman, and I’m a mother. I’ve given birth twice. And the first, the first time that I gave birth was incredibly challenging. I’ve never really shared that story publicly.

I went into labor. It was June 5th of 1998. I went to see my doctor, and he told me what was going on. He sent me to the hospital. He sent me to the care of a midwife. That midwife sat with me all night long because I broke my water, but I wasn’t in labor, so I thought, “Everything’s good.” I’m listening to the young ladies down the hallway moaning and groaning. I was like, “O, God has got me through everything’s going to be good.” Around 5 am in the morning, my doctor comes in and checks on me, and he sees that there is meconium present in my uterus.

I have no idea what he’s talking about, but then he explains to me. I’m sure that OBGYNs can get up and tell you what that meant was that my daughter had a bowel movement inside of me before she was born, and so she was actually ingesting … poison that was inside with the amino fluid. He gives me rest, and then he speeds up the labor and takes me … into the room where I’m going to give birth. When my daughter was born, she was not breathing, but he had a neonatal unit waiting right there. He gave [her] to me for two seconds, and then they were working on her.

Then my temperature spiked. They could not control my temperature. I gave birth at 1:20, and they took me into recovery, but they would not release me until they could get my temperature down. They tried everything, and they could not get my temperature down.

While I was in the recovery, they told me that the only person that was going to be able to come back was my husband. My husband never came back. I never saw him. I did not see my mother. I was not able to talk to anybody. And then they came in and told me that my daughter was really, really sick, and I had to sign paperwork for her to have a spinal tap. She was born with jaundice down, and she had she wasn’t breathing. They put her into an incubator.

I was in recovery until about 8 o’clock at night, and I was not able to see my child. When I came out of recovery, my mother was there, my husband was there, and I told them to pray and go check on our daughter. There were so many different things that happened. My daughter ended up staying in the hospital for two weeks. But it was by God’s grace and God’s mercy that I couldn’t see my daughter for probably 48 hours because I had to go 24 hours without having a temperature. Nothing they were giving me was keeping my temperature down.

There’re so many stories, and I’m thankful to God that she had stayed in the hospital for two weeks, and we took my home. She’s 27 now. She’s good. Everything is great. The next birth was a cesarean.

But there’s so many stories that don’t end that way. My great grandmother used to say to me—my great-grandmother Helen Clemons was born in 1909— and she said, “When women gave birth, they have one foot in the grave and one foot upon the earth.” And I did not understand where she went until I actually went through that process, which is why I feel so honored to work with the borough president who has put maternal mortality as a priority in his in work.

His first year in office, he took all of his capital in $45 million, and he did not give it to the nonprofits that really, really needed it all throughout the borough. But he gave all $45 million to the three public hospitals to create state-of-the-art neonatal units. Woodhall, and Kings County, and South Brooklyn Health will have state of the art neonatal units where we can give birth.

He didn’t stop there. He created a Maternal Mortality Task Force. He had doctors and midwives and doulas and women coming together meeting once a month to talk about the things that were important, to have the conversations that so many of us don’t want to have, to address the racism in the way that the doctors treat women of color when we talk about what our pain is.

Because when we were running for office, we found out that a Black woman, a black woman, is eight to nine times more likely to die during childbirth than her white counterparts, and a woman of Haitian descent is 12.1 times more likely to die during childbirth. If it were any other race of people, it would be national news, and people would be trying to figure it out.
This is why I’m eternally grateful to Dr. Durrah and all of the organizations that are here today; Dr. Thomasina Ellison Clark, Dr. Denise Howard, who are OBGYNs and they are chairing departments and hospitals in Brooklyn.

It’s so important that we know who our doctors are, that we have representation, that we have relationship with the people who are touching us and giving or and helping us to bring life into this, into this world, that we know what types of questions to ask, and that can bring awareness to what is happening. So, let’s continue to ring the alarm. Let’s continue to work together to eradicate this issue. We are in a first world country. We can eradicate Black maternal mortality. We can make it so that women who are giving birth live to raise their children. God bless you.