After a woman found the daughter she thought had died at birth, an attorney now says other poor young black women may have had their babies taken from them. (Source: Reuters)
Melanie Gilmore was reunited with her mother, Zella Jackson Price, last month, after a DNA test proved the relationship. Video of their reunion was posted to YouTube.
In 1965, Price had been told by a nurse at the now-shuttered Homer G. Phillips Hospital that her baby had died.
Since their reunion, Price’s lawyer, family attorney Albert Watkins, says he has heard from more than 20 black women who have similar stories about giving birth at Phillips and being told their babies had died in the 1950s and 1960s.
Watkins says no death certificates have been found for the babies the nurses said had died.
Phillips was owned by the city of St. Louis. The hospital was for black patients during segregation and became a training hospital for black doctors. It was closed in 1979.
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