Skimmed : Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice

Born into a tenant farming family in North Carolina in 1946, Mary Louise, Mary Ann, Mary Alice, and Mary Catherine were medical miracles. Annie Mae Fultz, a Black-Cherokee woman who lost her ability to hear and speak in childhood, became the mother of America's first surviving set of identical quadruplets. They were instant celebrities. Their White doctor named them after his own family members. He sold the rights to use the sisters for marketing purposes to the highest-bidding formula company. The girls lived in poverty, while Pet Milk's profits from a previously untapped market of Black families skyrocketed. Over half a century later, baby formula is a seventy-billion-dollar industry and Black mothers have the lowest breastfeeding rates in the country. Since slavery, legal, political, and societal factors have routinely denied Black women the ability to choose how to feed their babies. In Skimmed , Andrea Freeman tells the riveting story of the Fultz quadruplets while uncovering how feeding America's youngest citizens is awash in social, legal, and cultural inequalities. This book highlights the making of a modern public health crisis, the four extraordinary girls whose stories encapsulate a nationwide injustice, and how we can fight for a healthier future. "The Famous Fultz Quads tells the heartbreaking story of America's first recorded African American quadruplets, their rise to fame and use as advertising symbols for baby formula companies, and the damage done both to their lives and the greater health and wellbeing of generations of African American families in the US. This book brings to light the true causes of the dramatic racial disparities in breastfeeding rates in America--revealing how aspects of law, corporate influence, culture, and the media have all contributed to this disparity, and provides concrete strategies for legal and policy reform that would reduce or eliminate racial disparities in breastfeeding and infant mortality"--Provided by the publisher "The Famous Fultz Quads tells the heartbreaking story of America's first recorded African American quadruplets, their rise to fame and use as advertising symbols for baby formula companies, and the damage done both to their lives and the greater health and wellbeing of generations of African American families in the US. This book brings to light the true causes of the dramatic racial disparities in breastfeeding rates in America--revealing how aspects of law, corporate influence, culture, and the media have all contributed to this disparity, and provides concrete strategies for legal and policy reform that would reduce or eliminate racial disparities in breastfeeding and infant mortality"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Contents 8 Prologue 10 Introduction: A Formula for Discrimination 16 1 The Famous Fultz Quads 30 2 Black Breastfeeding in America 50 3 Race-Targeted Formula Marketing 74 4 The Bad Black Mother 102 5 When Formula Rules 142 6 Legalizing Breast Milk 168 7 The Fultz Quads after Pet Milk 192 Conclusion: “First Food” Freedom 202 Acknowledgments 208 Notes 212 Index 294 A 294 B 294 C 295 D 295 E 296 F 296 G 296 H 297 I 297 J 297 K 297 L 297 M 298 N 298 O 298 P 298 R 299 S 299 T 300 U 300 V 300 W 300