National Trust grant to help restore Camilla nursing home

Jul. 19—WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Camilla, Ga., nursing home was announced last week as a recipient of a grant from the African American Cultural Heritage Fund.

The Georgia B. Williams Nursing Home, operated by midwife Beatrice Borders and named for her mother, was the only known birthing center of its kind for Black women in the region, according to an article published in June by the Georgia Recorder. The article was sparked when the National Trust for Historic Preservation named it one of America's Most Endangered Historic Places early that month.

On July 15, the African American Cultural Heritage Fund announced $3 million in grants to 40 projects across the country, five of them in Georgia.

The fund is a multi-year initiative of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in partnership with the Ford Foundation, the JPB Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and other partners. It is working to elevate the stories and places of African American achievement and activities, according to a press release announcing the grants.

"Midwives were critical to the health of Black mothers in the Jim Crow era when hospitals were segregated or nonexistent in some areas," the press release said. "This grant will help rehabilitate the Georgia B. Williams Nursing Home (birthing center) and create a Southern African-American Midwife Museum, interpretive center, and multi-use space."

The Georgia Recorder article said the house was built in the 1930s. Borders lived there and ran it as a birthing center from the 1940s into the 1970s. When she ended her run as a midwife, she had helped bring into the world as many as 6,000 babies.

The facility was later used as a child care center but has been vacant since 2004. Damage to the structure since then has been extensive.

For more about the project to restore the building, visit www.beasbabies.org. For more about the National Trust for Historic Preservation, visit www.savingplaces.org; details about the African American Cultural Heritage Fund can be found at savingplaces.org/actionfund.

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