Historical Spotlight: The Fultz Sisters

Having a baby and becoming a mom is something many women look forward to their entire lives. The thought of nurturing a life that you and your partner made out of love is an amazingly beautiful thing. Having multiple babies is not only rare, but in some instances can be life threatening. Join me as we shine a Historical Spotlight on the first set of identical Black quadruplets, the Fultz Sisters. 

The Fultz Sisters were born on May 23, 1946 in Reidsville, North Carolina to their biological parents James “Pete” Fultz, Jr. and Annie Mae Troxler Fultz. The set were born prematurely and weighed only 3.5 pounds. There was no incubator so the sisters were laid next to each other for warmth, with cotton gauze blankets and an old hot plate. 

Fred Klenner, a white doctor who had served the family for years before the girls’ birth, delivered them. He was assisted by a Black nurse named Margaret Ware, but was caught off guard during their delivery. He was expecting Annie Mae to deliver triplets after a previous x-ray showed only three infants. 

Their parents were tobacco sharecroppers, but their mother was deaf and mute after suffering from meningitis as a child. She had a couple sets of names picked out, but Fred ultimately named them all Mary to honor the mother of Jesus, followed by names of women in his own family. Mary Louise, Mary Ann, Mary Alice, and Mary Catherine were their final names, and throughout their lives, they were primarily called by their second names. 

Since they were born prematurely, Fred experimentally treated the sisters with high doses of injected Vitamin C to positively assist their health. Fred, who was originally from Pennsylvania and of German American descent, was later criticized for being an outright racist since he openly sympathized with the Nazis and defended Adolf Hitler. His office often contained white supremacist materials like pamphlets from the John Birch Society and the White Citizen Council. 

From a young age, the sisters received national media coverage and appeared on the cover of Ebony magazine on their first birthday. They were even offered scholarships to attend college before they were old enough to start elementary school. Milk companies like Pet, Carnation, and Borden all wanted the sisters to promote their products, but Pet provided a more lucrative deal and agreed to support them for at least the first ten years of their lives. 

The Pet contract provided a home with electricity and running water on 148 acres, four mules, and a 24-hour Black nurse named Elma Saylor. This sponsorship was not only to attract new Black consumers, but also to promote the product as a main contributor to the sisters’ healthy growth. To the media, Pet Milk was the only thing they ate. Their Vitamin C treatments were kept secret. 

In 1952, they were legally adopted by Elma and her husband Charles, who had previously lost a child to polio. Pet bought a home for the Saylors about 30 miles away from the original Fultz Farm, and the sisters started school at Caswell County Training School, an all-Black K-12 school, that same year. 

Elma taught them how to sing and they learned to play several instruments. As they got older, they started traveling more often for Pet promotions, photoshoots, and TV appearances. In 1954, they were only seven years old when they did their first paid performance by singing and dancing at a high school. 

While in high school, they spent summers working at a diner in Greensboro and lived with the owner. In 1961, Alice got pregnant at only 15 years old and was forced to give the child up for adoption due to it being born out of wedlock. She attempted contacting her child decades later with no success. 

In August 1962, they got to meet President John F. Kennedy at the White House. In 1964, they turned 18, and their Pet contract officially came to an end. They graduated from Caswell in 1965 and continued their education on a four-year scholarship to Bethune-Cookman University. Unfortunately, all those instances of being pulled in multiple directions in their formative years led to them skipping classes, having poor grades, and ultimately withdrawing from school after two years. 

After school didn’t work out, they decided to move to New York in hopes of creating a career in show business. They graduated from a modeling school and appeared in multiple ad campaigns, but were unable to create a substantial living from it. They all became nurses’ aides and moved to different cities to continue their lives. They ended up having only one child each, fearing multiple births.

In 1981, Alice was diagnosed with breast cancer at only 35 years old and underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment. All four sisters were diagnosed with breast cancer and they moved back to the Carolinas to be close to each other. 

Breast cancer took the lives of Louise on April 1, 1991 at age 45, Ann in 1996 at age 49, and Alice on October 7, 2001 at age 55. In 1995, Catherine underwent a mastectomy to prolong her life, but ultimately lost the battle to cancer in her spine and chest on October 2, 2018. She lived to be the oldest Fultz Sister at 79 years old. 

Before her death, Catherine thought the health complications from breast cancer that ultimately cut their lives short was caused by the vitamin shots they received as children. They were the first and only set of identical black quadruplets to be born and survive infancy in the South. 

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Signed, 

Jessica Marie