Maude E. Callen (1898 – 1990) was a nurse and midwife in the South Carolina Lowcountry, USA, for over 60 years.


 She was a 'doctor, dietician, psychologist, bail-goer and friend' to thousands of mostly African Americans crippled by poverty in the 1950s.


Yet tireless South Carolina nurse-midwife Maude Callen - who delivered hundreds of children, cared for the elderly and educated midwifery students in a 400-mile area 'veined with muddy roads' - never considered herself a hero.


Maude E. Callen was born in Florida, in 1898, one of thirteen sisters. She was orphaned by the age of six and then was raised in the home of her uncle, Dr. William J. Gunn, a physican, in Tallahassee, Florida. She graduated from Florida A & M University in 1922 and then completed her nursing course at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Callen then moved to Pineville, South Carolina in 1923, where she set up practice. She was one of only nine nurse-midwives, at the time, in the area.


Callen operated a community clinic out of her home, which was miles from any hospital. She provided in-home services to “an area of some 400 square miles veined with muddy roads”, serving as 'doctor, dietician, psychologist, bail-goer and friend' to thousands of desperately poor patients. It is estimated she delivered between six hundred and eight hundred babies in her years of practice. In addition to providing medical services, Callen also taught women from the community to be midwives.


In December 1951, Life magazine published a twelve-page photographic essay of Callen’s work, by the celebrated photojournalist, W. Eugene Smith. Smith spent weeks with Callen at her clinic and on her rounds. The photos are visually arresting, both as a haunting record of the time but also as ongoing testament to the power of nursing and midwifery to effect social change.


During her lifetime Maude E. Callen received many awards and recognition for her work, including The Alexis de Tocqueville Society Award in 1984, for sixty years of service to her community.

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