How African American Women Were 'Skimmed' By Infant Formula Marketing
Here & Now‘s Tonya Mosley speaks with Andrea Freeman — whose book “Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice” looks at how formula was marketed to African American women in the late 20th century.
Book Excerpt: ‘Skimmed’
Introduction
A FORMULA FOR DISCRIMINATION
On May 23, 1946, in the rural southern town of Reidsville, North Carolina, a small miracle occurred. The woman responsible for this miracle was Annie Mae Fultz. Annie Mae was a tall, beautiful, Black-Cherokee mother of six children. She had lost her ability to speak and hear during a childhood illness. Beginning at 1:13 a.m., Annie Mae gave birth, in short intervals, to the world’s first recorded identical quadruplets. Against the odds, each of these four tiny girls survived their first few hours and began to grow steadily. Word of their birth spread quickly throughout the country. Annie Mae’s joy at her perfect new daughters was irrepressible, expressed in exuberant debates with friends and relatives at her hospital bedside about possible names for the girls. But this overwhelming happiness was far too short-lived.
Fred Klenner was the White doctor who delivered the girls in Annie Penn Hospital, in the basement wing reserved for Black patients. Dr. Klenner quickly realized how his new patients’ instant celebrity could benefit him. He began testing his controversial theories about vitamin C on the
