The origin of America's first surviving set of identical quadruplets.
We're pleased to present an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice » by Andrea Freeman.
Annie Mae Fultz could not afford to let anything go wrong with her pregnancy. Her doctor, Fred Klenner, had detected three tiny heartbeats inside her. It was 1946. Annie Mae was a tall, strong, thirty-seven-year-old half-Black, half-Cherokee woman from Tennessee.1 Dr. Klenner, although originally from Pennsylvania, happily adhered to southern racial norms.2 He had separate waiting rooms for Blacks and Whites in his downtown Reidsville, North Carolina, office. The old-fashioned decor of his practice matched his dated views. His segregated waiting rooms gave way to treatment rooms full of ancient furniture and unusual medical instruments.3 His walls displayed White supremacist literature and, later, a “Vote for George Wallace” poster.4 He vigorously defended Hitler as misunderstood to anyone who would listen.5 The local hospital where he delivered babies, Annie Penn Memorial, relegated Black mothers to the basement.6 Despite his unapologetic racism, Annie Mae had faith in Dr. Klenner’s medical abilities.
The neglected ward housed Annie Penn’s least valued patients and its oldest, shabbiest equipment. Annie Mae’s meager bedside boasted only bare-bones paraphernalia: a single-unit hot plate and a ten-quart kettle.
Annie Mae had plenty of challenges to overcome in the face of the growing lives inside her. A childhood battle with spinal meningitis had robbed her of the ability to hear or speak, rendering the possibility of a medical emergency, when urgent communication would be essential, even more frightening.7 On the tobacco farm where Annie Mae’s husband, James, a fifty-nine-year-old Black man known to all as Pete,8 toiled as a tenant farmer, there was no electricity.9 The family had no car, and the road leading out to the farm was rutted, long, and lonely. On Dr. Klenner’s advice, Annie Mae left her six children in their father’s care and moved into Annie Penn’s basement to wait out her delivery.10 To pass the long hours that followed on her hospital cot, Annie Mae conversed with her nurse, Margaret Ware, through gestures and lip-reading.11
The odds that all three of Annie Mae’s triplets would survive were slim. Although any mother expecting triplets must come to terms with multiples’ low survival rate, Annie Mae confronted more obstacles than most. Advances in modern medicine that could have eased the birth process had yet to reach the basement. The neglected ward housed Annie Penn’s least valued patients and its oldest, shabbiest equipment. Annie Mae’s meager bedside boasted only bare-bones paraphernalia: a single-unit hot plate and a ten-quart kettle.12
At 1:20 a.m. on the morning of Thursday, May 23, 1946, Annie Mae let Margaret know that the babies were on their way.13 Dr. Klenner came quickly to supervise Annie Mae’s labor, which was surprisingly fast and easy. Three babies arrived like clockwork, at three-minute intervals.14 Annie Mae, Margaret, and Dr. Klenner then received a shock when a fourth baby, hiding behind her sister, suddenly appeared. Margaret ran upstairs to commandeer help from other doctors and nurses. Under Dr. Klenner’s instruction, they filled hot-water bottles, wrapped the four tiny babies in cotton gauze, and laid them next to each other for warmth while feeding them formula through medicine droppers.15 Miraculously, all four girls survived their first few hours, becoming the first living identical quadruplets on record in the United States.16
Back on the tobacco farm, Pete received a late-night visit from his breathless brother-in-law, Bill Troxler, who exclaimed, “Man, you better get up to the hospital quick. You got a whole bunch of babies. They’s so many of them, they laying ’em cross-wise of the bed.”17 Pete’s reaction was no less dramatic. He fell back on the bed, letting out a cry of “Good God!” and declared, “I never heard of so many babies at one time.”18 But Pete was no stranger to large families. Each of his two brothers had fifteen kids, with four sets of twins among them.19 Both Annie Mae and Pete were also twins.20
Perhaps this shared experience formed part of their unlikely attraction. The couple, twenty years apart in age, married in Guilford County, North Carolina, in 1930 after a three-month courtship.21 Their first child, Doretha, was sixteen when her sisters arrived. She had married three years earlier at age thirteen.22 The girls’ other siblings were George, who was fourteen; Charles, who was nine; twins Bernard and Frances Lee, who were also nine; and James Jr., who was one.23 Longevity ran in the family in addition to multiples. Pete’s mother, who lived with them, was still going strong at the ripe old age of 104.24
Pete visited Annie Mae and the babies at Annie Penn the next morning, but he could not stay long. He had never made more than five hundred dollars a year in his life,25 and he now had ten children, a wife, himself, and his mother to feed. Nonetheless, he left the hospital feeling hopeful. Dr. Klenner predicted that, if the girls lived through their first ten days, they would have a normal life expectancy.26 Neither Pete nor Annie Mae could foresee that the actions Dr. Klenner took on the girls’ first day of life and in the following weeks would undermine his optimistic declaration and their happiness.
Notes
1. Some reported Annie Mae as thirty-six or thirty-seven. “Quadruplets Born to N.C. Negress,” Anniston (AL) Star, May 23, 1946, 1.
2. Jerry Bledsoe, Bitter Blood (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1988), 179.
3. Jerry Bledsoe, “Fritz Klenner, His Father’s Son,” News & Record (Greensboro, NC), August 26, 1985, http://www.greensboro.com/bitter-blood-fritz-klenner-his-father-s-son/pdf_38317586-0617-11e5-ac22-f7f8ec7b9153.html.
4. Bledsoe, Bitter Blood, 178–79; and Jim Schlosser, “Memories of Murder,” News & Record (Greensboro, NC), June 3, 1995, http://www.greensboro.com/memories-of-murder/article_981baf03-4f07-5413-b29e-3d3461b6b71f.html.
5. Bledsoe, Bitter Blood, 183.
6. “Quads Born to Negro,” Waco News-Tribune, May 24, 1946, 11; and Melba Newsome, “I Think It Was the Shots,” O, The Oprah Magazine, April 1, 2005, 232.
7. Newsome, “I Think It Was the Shots”; and “Quadruplet Girls Born to N.C. Negro Couple,” Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times, May 24, 1946, 11.
8. “Negro Quads ‘Doing Fine,’” Index-Journal (Greenwood, SC), May 24, 1946, 8.
9. Frances M. Ward, “Seeing Double Times Two Famous Foursome Make Their Mark as World’s First Black Quadruplets,” News & Record (Greensboro, NC), May 22, 1990, http://www.greensboro.com/seeing-double-times-two-famous-foursome-make-their-mark-as/article_80d5c093-598c-55e1-8d39-32d59b090368.html.
10. Ward, “Seeing Double Times Two”; and Newsome, “I Think It Was the Shots.”
11. Lorraine Ahearn, “And Then There Was One,” News & Record (Greensboro, NC), August 3, 2002, http://www.greensboro.com/and-then-there-was-one-they-were-four-of-the/article_7d5869a7-3b2b-5b7d-b5d0-044464d8aba3.html.
12. “Quadruplet Girls Are Born,” St. Louis Dispatch, May 23, 1946, 24; and Ahearn, “And Then There Was One.”
13. Ahearn, “And Then There Was One.”
14. “Quadruplets Born to Mute at Reidsville,” Daily Times-News (Burlington, NC), May 23, 1946, 14.
15. Newsome, “I Think It Was the Shots.”
>16. “Fultz Quads ‘More Amazing’ than Dionne Quintuplets,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 3, 1946, 22.
17. “Reidsville Quads to Have First Santa Visit,” Bee (Danville, VA), December 24, 1946, 5; and Ahearn, “And Then There Was One.”
18. “Pa of 4 Negroes Nearly Faints at Stork’s Generosity,” Bee (Danville, VA), May 24, 1946, 4; and “Quadruplets Born to Mute at Reidsville.”
19. “Fultz Quads ‘More Amazing’ than Dionne Quintuplets.”
20. “Quadruplets Born to N.C. Negress.”
21. “Mother Deaf Mute: Carolina Tenant Farm Pair Parents of Quads,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 1, 1946, 2.
22. “Quadruplets’ First Birthday,” Ebony, May 1947, 18.
23. “Quadruplet Girls Are Born in South; Condition Good,” Tipton (IN) Daily Tribune, May 24, 1946, 8; and “Quadruplets’ First Birthday.”
24. “Pet Milk Company’s ‘New Pets,’” Pittsburgh Courier, June 29, 1946, 3.
25. “Quads Bring Joy to N.C. Family of Eight,” Baltimore Afro-American, August 24, 1946, 20.
26. “Quadruplet Girls Born to N.C. Negro Couple.”
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