All normal people thank this wonderful nurse and activist for helping to civilize our world. The fact that you and your kind hate her and misrepresent her while gnashing your teeth is sufficient proof of the profound good she has accomplished!!
plannedparenthood.org
Among her many visionary accomplishments as a
social reformer, Sanger
• established these principles:
o A woman's right to control her body
is the foundation of her human
rights.
o Every person should be able to
decide when or whether to have a
child.
o Every child should be wanted and
loved.
o Women are entitled to sexual
pleasure and fulfillment.
• brought about the reversal of federal and
state "Comstock laws" that prohibited
publication and distribution of information
about sex, sexuality, contraception, and
human reproduction
• furthered the contemporary American model
for the protection of civil rights through
nonviolent civil disobedience
• created access to birth control for lowincome, minority, and immigrant women
• expanded the American concept of
volunteerism and grassroots organizing by
setting up a network of volunteer-driven
family planning centers across the U.S.
Sanger also entertained some popular ideas of her
own time that are out of keeping with our thinking
today. This fact sheet is designed to separate fact
from fiction and to further explain Sanger's views
and the background against which they must be
judged.
Sanger's Outreach to the African-American
Community
Harlem — 1930
In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in
Harlem that sought to enlist support for
contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family
planning to women who were denied access to their
city's health and social services. Staffed by a black
physician and black social worker, the clinic was
endorsed by The Amsterdam News (the powerful
local newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church,
the Urban League, and the black community's elder
statesman, W.E.B. DuBois (Chesler, 1992).
Negro Project — 1939–1942
Beginning in 1939, DuBois served on the advisory
council for Sanger's "Negro Project," which was
designed to serve African Americans in the rural
South. The advisory council called it a "unique
experiment in race-building and humanitarian
service to a race subjected to discrimination,
hardship, and segregation (Chesler, 1992).”
In a letter to philanthropist Albert Lasker, from whom
she hoped to raise funds for the project, Sanger
wrote that she wanted to help
a group notoriously underprivileged and
handicapped to a large measure by a ‘caste’
system that operates as an added weight upon
their efforts to get a fair share of the better things
in life. To give them the means of helping
themselves is perhaps the richest gift of all. We
believe birth control knowledge brought to this
group, is the most direct, constructive aid that
can be given them to improve their immediate
situation (Sanger, 1939, July).
In 1942, she wrote again to Lasker, saying
I think it is magnificent that we are in on the
ground floor, helping Negroes to control their
birth rate, to reduce their high infant and
maternal death rate, to maintain better standards
of health and living for those already born, and to
create better opportunities for those who will be
born (Sanger, 1942).”
Other leaders of the African-American community
who were involved in the project included Mary
McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of
Negro Women, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor
of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.
The Negro Project was also endorsed by prominent
white Americans who were involved in social justice
efforts at this time, including Eleanor Roosevelt, the
most visible and compassionate supporter of racial
equality in her era; and the medical philanthropists,
Albert and Mary Lasker, whose financial support
made the project possible (Chesler, 1992).
Division of Negro Service —1940–43
Sanger’s Birth Control Federation of America, which
became Planned Parenthood Federation of
American in 1942, established a Division of Negro
Service to oversee the Negro Project and to
implement Sanger’s educational outreach to African
Americans nationally. Sponsored by Sanger’s
fundraising efforts and directed by Florence Rose,
the division provided black organizations across the
country with Planned Parenthood literature, set up
local educational exhibits, facilitated local and
national public relations, and employed an AfricanAmerican doctor, Mae McCarroll, to lobby medical
groups and teach contraceptive techniques to other
black doctors.
Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1966, the year Sanger died, the Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr. said
There is a striking kinship between our
movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts.
. . . Our sure beginning in the struggle for
equality by nonviolent direct action may not
have been so resolute without the tradition
established by Margaret Sanger and people like
her (King, 1966).
Was Sanger racially motivated?
Despite the admiration that African-American heroes
like DuBois, Powell, and King held for Sanger,
arguments continue about whether or not her
outreach to the black community was racially
motivated. The patriarchal racism of the social
policy of the time and the well-intentioned
paternalism of philanthropists to “lift up” AfricanAmericans, may have influenced Sanger. But there
is no evidence that Sanger, or the Federation,
intended to coerce black women into using birth
control:
The fundamental belief, underscored at every
meeting, mentioned in much of the behind-thescenes correspondence, and evident in all the
printed material put out by the Division of Negro
Service, was that uncontrolled fertility presented
the greatest burden to the poor, and Southern
blacks were among the poorest Americans. In
fact, the Negro Project did not differ very much
from the earlier birth control campaigns in the
rural South … it would have been more racist, in
Sanger’s mind, to ignore African Americans in
the South than to fail at trying to raise the health
and economic standards of their communities
(“Birth Control or Race Control,” 2001). |
