Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Margaret Sanger: What did she say to the Ku Klux Klan?

When trying to figure out what Margaret Sanger said when she spoke at the Ku Klux Klan Rally in Silver Lake, one might want to start by reviewing what she said in other venues.

Diane Dew has a pretty good collection of Margaret Sanger quotes that can be seen here:

Margaret SangerFounder of Planned Parenthood In Her Own Words

My guess is that she began her talk at the Ku Klux Klan Rally with something similar to this one:

"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," Margarety Sanger said, "if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As a historian, I find it incredibly disingenuous the way the far- and Christian right choose to characterize historical figures in such ignorant and ham-handed way. You can try to demonize Margaret Sanger--or reclaim Susan B. Anthony or Thomas Jefferson as right-wing ideologues or what have you--but history does not stand with you.

If Sanger spoke with the KKK women's auxiliary because it was one of the largest social organizations of the time, she obviously did so with some trepidation (as is obvious in the tone of the small sound-bite you and others use) and for an audience who did not really agree with her message of women's liberation through control of their own bodies. In fact, though occasional moderately eugenicist ideas proffer minor superficial likenesses, the viewpoints of such women's groups and of the Nazis and other fascists were in most cases in direct contradiction with Sanger and other sexual liberals of the time.

The conservative 1920s KKK and the later German National Socialists, whether politely listening to Sanger or not, thought that contraception by women was a danger to the moral identity of the state/nation/race. Not unlike you and your comrades, they would rather burn Sanger's books (as the Nazis did later) or ban their mailing in US postal areas (which Sanger successfully fought) than actually admit that it's good for women to control their bodies. So... who's side are YOU really on?