Search Results for: Sanger

Sanger, Margaret

Margaret (nee: Higgins) Sanger risked scandal, danger, and imprisonment to challenge the legal and cultural obstacles that made controlling fertility difficult and illegal. Ms. Sanger viewed birth control as a woman’s issue and she was prepared to take on the medical establishment, the churches, the legislatures, and the courts. She was persuasive, tireless, single-minded, and unafraid of a fight. On October 16,1916 she opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn, was arrested, and served thirty days for distributing information about contraceptives. From that experience, Sanger moved on to assume leadership of the struggle for free access to birth control. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League, the precursor to the Planned Parenthood Federation, and spent her next three decades campaigning to bring safe and effective birth control into the American mainstream.

Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda (1921)

We have come to the conclusion, based on widespread investigation and experience, that this education for parenthood must be based upon the needs and demands of the people themselves. An idealistic code of sexual ethics, imposed from above, a set of rules devised by high-minded theorists who fail to take into account the living conditions and desires of the submerged masses, can never be of the slightest value in effecting any changes in the mores of the people. Such systems have in the past revealed their woeful inability to prevent the sexual and racial chaos into which the world has today drifted.

Birth Control Wins (1937)

Two events which occurred at the end of 1936 may signify a turning-point in the birth-control movement in America. Together they denote the closing of one era—the era of pioneering, of preparation, of laying the foundation—and the beginning of another—an era of extensive research and clinical accomplishments.

Hubert, James H.

James Henry Hubert (1886-1970) – Social Worker, Activist and Director of the New York Urban League James Henry Hubert grew up on a farm. Hubert graduated from Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA in 1910. His first teaching experience was at Simmons University, Louisville, Kentucky, in 1911; there he taught economics and sociology. While at Louisville, James…

Wald, Lillian

Lillian D. Wald (1867 – 1940) — Nurse, Social Worker, Women’s Rights Activist and Founder of Henry Street Settlement Introduction: Lillian D. Wald was a nurse, social worker, public health official, teacher, author, editor, publisher, woman’s rights activist, and the founder of American community nursing. Her unselfish devotion to humanity is recognized around the…

Social Welfare Developments, 1901-1950

Editor’s Note: All items are in chronological order in the year under which they are listed. 1902 The first State workmen’s compensation law is enacted in Maryland; it was declared unconstitutional in 1904. Homer Folks, founder and head of the New York State Charities Aid Association publishes Care of Destitute, Neglected and Delinquent Children. Conversion…