For 60 years Emma Dupree was the doctor her community relied on.

She never went to medical school.

She learned in the woods. Along the banks of the Tar River in Pitt County, North Carolina.

She pulled up weeds, bit into them, smelled them and learned what they could do.

Sassafras. White mint. Double tansy. Rabbit tobacco. Maypop that smelled like a banana.

I got to ramblin' that woods, she said. Got to makin' the woods my own.

Her parents came out of slavery. They knew the land.

When the 1918 pandemic came, there were no hospitals for Black people.

When it begun, she said, I toted my tea and so on. The Lord just let it work.

She never charged anyone. She accepted what people could offer: lemons, vinegar, rock candy, honey, molasses. She stored her preparations in repurposed jars and jugs and never labeled them. If you came to Aunt Emma for help, you were expected to listen and remember.

I'm just a vessel, she said. God is using me through these plants.

The doctors came eventually. The anthropologists. The medical students. They wrote down what she knew. Took it back to their institutions.

She was 82 when East Carolina University filmed her. She lived 17 more years.

She is buried in Falkland, where she was born.

All that we see, she said, everything that is growin' in the earth is healin' to the nation of any kind of disease.

Image Credit: Mary Anne McDonald