Woman of Valor (103 page)

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Paul Robinson,
The Modernization of Sex
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Victor Robinson,
Pioneers of Birth Control
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William J. Robinson,
Eugenics, Marriage and Birth Control
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John D. Rock, M.D. and David Loth,
Voluntary Parenthood
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John D. Rock, M.D.,
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Eleanor Roosevelt,
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Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds.,
Woman, Culture, and Society
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Phyllis Rose,
Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages
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----,
Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf
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Rosalind Rosenberg,
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----,
Divided Lives: American Women in the 20th Century
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Barbara Gutman Rosenkrantz,
Public Health and the State: Changing Views in Massachusetts,1842-1936
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Robert A. Rosenstone,
Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed
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Ellen K. Rothman,
Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America
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Sheila M. Rothman,
Woman's Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the Present
(New York: 1978).

Sheila Rowbotham,
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Sheila Rowbotham and Jeffrey Weeks,
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Louise Palken Rudnick,
Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds
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Mary P. Ryan,
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Margaret Sanger,
An Autobiography
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----,
Appeals from American Mothers
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----,
The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Fact
(New York: 1917).

----,
Family Limitation
, various editions. (New York: 1914-1919.)

----,
Happiness in Marriage
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----,
Motherhood in Bondage
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----,
My Fight for Birth Control
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----,
The New Motherhood
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----,
The Pivot of Civilization
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Sayings of Others on Birth Control
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----,
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----,
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----, ed.,
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Lothrop Stoddard,
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----,
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Kenneth Underwood,
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Martha Vicinus, ed.,
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Susan Ware,
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----,
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----,
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----,
The Secret Places of the Heart
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----,
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2d ed. (Boston: 1957).

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(New York: 1984).

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(New York: 1909).

Garry Wills,
Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radical Religion
(New York: 1972).

Richard and Dorothy Wirtz,
Lying In: A History of Childbirth in America
(New York: 1978).

Robert Woodbury,
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(Washington, D.C.: 1926).

Virginia Woolf,
To the Lighthouse
(New York: 1927).

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(New York: 1954).

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The Khanna Study: Population Problems in the Rural Punjab
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Rachelle S. Yarros,
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William Butler Yeats,
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DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS AND UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS:

Janet F. Brodie, “Family Limitation in American Culture: 1830-1900.” Doctoral Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1982

Harold Hersey, “Birth Control Pioneer,” Unpublished Ms., 1938. Manuscript Division, New York Public Library.

Alexander Campbell Sanger, “Margaret Sanger, The Early Years, 1910-1917.” Senior Thesis, Princeton University, 1969.

Malia Sedgewick Johnson, “Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in Japan, 1921-1955.” Doctoral Dissertation, University of Hawaii, 1987.

William N. Morehouse, “The Speaking of Margaret Sanger in the Birth Control Movement from 1916 to 1937.” Doctoral Dissertation, Purdue University, 1968.

Carlo Tresca, “Autobiography,” Unpublished Ms., in the Carlo Tresca Papers, Manuscript Division, New York Public Library.

Maris A. Vinovskis, “Demographic Changes in America from the Revolution to the Civil War: An Analysis of the Socio-Economic Determinants of Fertility Differentials and Trends in Massachusetts from 1765 to 1860,” Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University, 1975.

Francis M. Vreeland, “The Process of Reform with Especial Reference to Reform Groups in the Field of Population.” Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1929.

My work on this book has spanned two decades, during which I have incurred many debts.

I am grateful first for financial support. I became interested in Margaret Sanger and the history of birth control in America years ago while a graduate student at Columbia University, where I was supported by a Faculty Fellowship. I was subsequently awarded a two-year grant from the Program for Population Research in the Social Sciences, sponsored jointly by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. The late Fred Jaffe, then of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, encouraged my application for that stipend because of his own affection for Sanger and his conviction that the past might inspire, and perhaps even enlighten, contemporary population policymakers. I hope that this book rewards his confidence, at long last.

I am grateful, second, to my uncommonly talented colleagues in the world of New York government, politics and civic affairs. In 1977, I set aside this project to join the campaign, and later the administration, of former New York City Council President Carol Bellamy. As chief of staff to the first woman ever elected to citywide office, I experienced the very special rewards of committing oneself to public service, and some of the hazards too, especially for women who dare to be outspoken. My own practical experience, then and since, invariably informs this book, as much as the more conventional archival research in which it is grounded.

My return to the project in 1985 was made possible by the generosity of David and Sheila Rothman, who found a temporary place for me at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Medicine and Society, where I could wend my way back into scholarship. For their support and friendship, and for David's careful and thoughtful reading of an earlier draft of this manuscript that I presented as a doctoral dissertation in American history, I am deeply indebted. No less is my debt to Rosalind Rosenberg, of Barnard and Columbia, and to Sylvia Law, of the New York University School of Law, who both also read and annotated the dissertation with great intelligence and sensitivity; to Atina Grossmann and Priscilla Wald of Columbia, who served on the committee; to James Reed of Rutgers and Gina Morantz-Sanchez of UCLA, whose fine scholarship in the history of medicine and of sexuality first inspired my own; and to Temma Kaplan, former director of the Barnard College Women's Center, where I read several chapters of this work in draft.

For research guidance I am indebted as well to the diligent and devoted archivists who have patiently assembled and organized the papers that Margaret Sanger and a large supporting cast of characters left behind. Special thanks are due Susan Grigg, the director of the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, and Susan Boone, Mary-Elizabeth Murdock, Eleanor Lewis and Dorothy Greene, all former staff members; Esther Katz and Peter Engelman, who both graciously read and commented on the manuscript, and Cathy Hajo and Anke Hubbard, all of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University and Smith College; Patricia King, Elizabeth Shenton, and Eva Moseley of the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College; Richard Wolfe of the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University; Peter Johnson, archivist for the Rockefeller family, who facilitated my use of the rich collections at the archives at Pocantico Hills; Claudia Anderson of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas; the archivists of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York; Dr. Anthony Zito of Catholic University and, finally, the many cooperative staff members at the Library of Congress and the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Countless Planned Parenthood personnel all over the country have also been responsive to my inquiries, especially, Gloria Roberts of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America; Elly Anderson of Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona; Charlotte Levine, formerly of the Margaret Sanger Center of Planned Parenthood-New York City; and Steve Plevar, who is currently in charge of public relations there. Phyllis Martin of the Painted Post Historical Society helped me in Corning, New York. Paul Avrich helped locate anarchists. Taki Katoh sent materials from Japan, and Barbara Ramusack shared her research on India. Molly Ivins sent the latest in anti-Sanger propaganda. Joan Dunlop of the International Women's Health Coalition has educated me on contemporary issues in international family planning. Helene and Mark Kaplan graciously stored my early research files during the years when I was otherwise engaged, and they deserve a special benediction. Delores Jones has kept me well-organized ever since.

New York University's Biography Seminar, and more recently the distaff sessions on “Writing Women's Lives,” have provided a most rewarding opportunity to share thoughts and concerns about craft. David Garrow, whose forthcoming study of the Supreme Court's decisions in the Griswold and Roe cases promises to pick up where this story leaves off, has offered fresh insights in the final stages of my work. Jane Alpert, who has been thinking about the history and the politics of family planning, also offered thoughtful comments.

In addition, many cherished friends have faithfully eyed pieces of the manuscript whenever I needed a new perspective or just a word of encouragement. My warmest thanks to Louise Burnham, Naomi Marks Cohan, Peggy Davis, Benny Ensminger, Jamie Fellner, Leslie Koch, Neal Johnston, William Josephson, Eden Lipson, Suzanne Slesin, Gillian Walker, and William Wilson. Still more friends and family have listened to me talk on and on about Margaret Sanger over the years. To all of them I am also grateful, and especially so to film critic, Joel Siegel, who unearthed an early edition of
Woman and the New Race
.

The one clear benefit of taking so many years to write this book has been the refinement in the interim of personal computers. For assistance in choosing hardware and in helping me realize WordPerfect's full potential, special blessings to Michael Kraft, Faried Abrahams, and Peter Lesser. My thanks as well to Charles Kaiser, Rich Meislin, Neal Johnston, Costa Rodis, Felicia Halpert, and especially to New York's only computer whiz by day and comedienne by night, Teri Coyne.

The extensive traveling I have done to track down Margaret Sanger has only been possible because of the friends and family who put me up at night in distant places: Alan and Betty Newmark in London, Jamie Fellner and Rick Cotton in Washington, Lois and Leon Thikoll in Tucson, Lewis Chesler in Los Angeles, Barbara Chesler in New Haven, Eleanor Lewis in Northampton, and Barbara Sicherman, lo, those many years ago in Cambridge.

The many generous individuals who made themselves available for interviews are acknowledged in the bibliography and notes, but special mention is again due the family of Margaret Sanger, especially the late Grant Sanger, M.D., and the late Olive Byrne Richard--who were my most devoted muses--Stuart and Barbara Sanger, Alexander Campbell Sanger, and Margaret Sanger Marston (now Margaret Marston Lampe). They have all been unusually gracious.

Robert Asahina has been an especially wise and judicious editor, and there is really no way to acknowledge my appreciation of his extensive contribution to this book, save to say that I hope we will do another together. The same must be said for my dear friend Arthur Klebanoff, who has been a wonderfully devoted and able agent. My thanks as well to Sarah Pinckney of Simon & Schuster and especially to Ann Finlayson and Florence Falkow, for saving me from embarrassment with their rigorous and intelligent copy editing of the manuscript.

The essential debts are of course the most personal and the hardest to acknowledge. My parents, Howard and Celia Chesler, taught me a long time ago about the importance of balancing love and work in my life. My children, Jonathan and Betsy Mallow--both uncannily wise and winning--refresh my determination to do so each time I set my eyes upon them. My exceptional husband, Matt Mallow, is my ballast. He has nurtured this book in all ways possible, and to him it is dedicated with love. He's certainly waited for it for a very long time.

 

New York, New York

J
ANUARY
1992