5. Margaret Sanger, My Fight for Birth Control (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1931), 6, 8.
6. Ibid., 49.
7. Ibid.
8. “Anthony Comstock Dies in His Crusade,” New York Times, September 22, 1915, 1.
9. Chesler, Woman of Valor, 66; Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (New York: Truth Publishing, 1920), 189, 191, 193.
10. On Sanger’s goad to Ryan and other Catholic reformers in the 1910s, see Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Catholics and Contraception: An American History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 40–41. John A. Ryan, “Family Limitation,” Ecclesiastical Review 54, no. 6 (June 1916): 684–696. Ryan is treated at length in many scholarly histories of American Catholicism; a good, short introduction to his writings on birth control in the broader context of his social views is Clement Anthony Mulloy, “John A. Ryan and the Issue of Family Limitation,” Catholic Social Science Review 18 (2013): 91–104. See also Sharon M. Leon, An Image of God: The Catholic Struggle with Eugenics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 30–33 and passim.
11. M. P. Dowling, “Race-Suicide,” in Race-Suicide—Birth-Control (New York: America Press, n.d. [1915?]), 9.
12. Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 31.
13. For more details in the overall narrative of Sanger’s story, see Chesler, Woman of Valor; Jean H. Baker, Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion (New York: Hill and Wang, 2011); and Gray, Margaret Sanger. An earlier biography of Sanger that presents her in unflattering and, to later readers, sexist psychological terms—an overly emotional woman afraid of what she believed to be “an aggressive, threatening, masculine sexual instinct”—yet is strong on historical detail is David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), 3. The most detailed and influential histories of the long birth control movement in the United States are Linda Gordon, The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America (1974; reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002); and James Reed, The Birth Control Movement and American Society: From Private Vice to Public Virtue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978).
14. Sanger, Woman and the New Race, 167, 178.
15. Margaret Sanger to Juliet Barrett Rublee, August 25, 1921, reprinted in The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, ed. Esther Katz, vol. 1, The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 310.
16. Conference Committee members are listed in Birth Control: What It Is, How It Works, What It Will Do [The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference] (New York: The Birth Control Review, n.d. [1921]), 1–3; hereinafter referred to as Birth Control: Proceedings.
17. “Dr. Reiland Dead; Was Rector Here,” New York Times, September 13, 1964, 86.
18. Dr. Karl Reiland, quoted in Dorothy Dunbar Bromley, “This Question of Birth Control,” Harper’s Monthly 160 (December 1929): 42.
19. Edith Houghton Hooker, “Opening Address,” in Birth Control: Proceedings, 12.
20. Ibid., 14. Molly Ladd-Taylor has marked a similar connection between the discourse of eugenics and the practice of marriage counseling, as witnessed in the prominent figure of Paul Popenoe. See Ladd-Taylor, “Eugenics, Sterilisation and Modern Marriage in the USA: The Strange Career of Paul Popenoe,” Gender & History 13, no. 2 (August 2001): 298–327.
21. On the history of eugenics, see Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York: Knopf, 1985); and Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, expanded ed. (Washington, DC: Dialog, 2012). The role of American religious leaders in the eugenics movement is well told in Christine Rosen, Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). For a detailed analysis of the relation between the eugenics movement and the birth control movement, see Gordon, Moral Property of Women. More on Sanger’s engagement with eugenics can be found in Baker, Margaret Sanger, 159–164 (Baker notes that Sanger was “never an orthodox eugenicist” and was rejected by the American Eugenics Society [164]); and Chesler, Woman of Valor, 195–196 and 216–217.
22. Margaret Sanger, untitled address at First Session, in Birth Control: Proceedings, 14–18; quotes on 15, 15–16.
23. This phrase comes from the letter Sanger had sent out to potential program participants earlier in 1921, with four questions to address. The first was, “Is not over-population a menace to the peace of the world?” Ibid., 4.
24. Ibid., 158, 173, 185. Additional invocations of “choice” appear, for instance on 77, 144, and 176.
25. Ibid., 60, 62, 65; Deaconess Virginia C. Young, “The Delinquent Girl—One of Our Liabilities,” Medical Times 49, no. 12 (December 1921): 289.
26. “Police Veto Halts Birth Control Talk; Town Hall in Tumult,” New York Times, November 14, 1921, 1.
27. Catholic interference was never proven, but historians have long agreed that Archbishop Hayes was very likely or at least “plausibly” involved. See John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 159.
28. “Birth Control Raid Made by Police on Archbishop’s Order,” New York Times, November 15, 1921, 1.
29. “Asks Police Aid for Birth Control Talk,” New York Times, November 16, 1921, 17.
30. “Police Denounced for Stopping Meeting,” New York Times, November 17, 1921, 5.
31. “Cornerstone Laid for Public Forum,” New York Times, January 25, 1920, 10.
32. “Birth Control Talk Guarded by Police,” New York Times, November 19, 1921, 1.
33. Ibid., 1, 5.
34. Margaret Sanger, untitled address, Birth Control: Proceedings, 171.
35. Ibid., 172.
36. Ibid., 171.
37. Ibid., 172, 173, 174.
38. “Birth Control Talk Guarded by Police,” 1, 5.
39. On Chase and his shifting alliances with female reformers, see Leigh Ann Wheeler, “Rescuing Sex from Prudery and Prurience: American Women’s Use of Sex Education as an Antidote to Obscenity, 1925–1932,” Journal of Women’s History 12, no. 3 (Autumn 2000): 173–195.
40. Sanger, “First American Birth Control Conference: Closing Remarks,” November 18, 1921, reprinted in Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger 1:328. (The discussion among birth control opponents that occurred after Sanger’s lecture and her final comments were not reprinted in Birth Control: Proceedings.)
41. Ibid., 1:328–329.
42. “Birth Control and Free Speech,” The Outlook, November 30, 1921, 507. For a different perspective on the press reaction to Sanger, see Kathleen A. Tobin, The American Religious Debate Over Birth Control, 1907-1937 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2001), 78–85.
43. “Birth Control and Taboo,” New Republic, November 30, 1921, 9.
44. Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (New York: Brentano’s, 1922), 30, 195, 196, 198.
45. Chesler, Woman of Valor, 198.
46. Margaret Sanger, “The War Against Birth Control,” American Mercury (June 1924): 233.
47. “Mrs. Sanger Replies to Archbishop Hayes,” New York Times, December 20, 1921, 24.
48. Sanger, Woman and the New Race, 66, 72, 73.
49. Patrick W. Carey, Catholics in America: A History (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 57.
50. Timothy A. Byrnes, Catholic Bishops in American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 27.
51. John A. Ryan, “Birth-Control: An Open Letter,” in Race-Suicide—Birth-Control, 25; also published online: http://transporter.com/Apologia/Life/Birth_Control.htm.
52. “Hayes Denounces Birth Control Aim,” New York Times, November 21, 1921, 1.
53. Ibid.
54. Sanger, Woman and the New Race, 167.
55. J. Elliot Ross, “A Study in Numbers,” Catholic World 117, no. 699 (June 1923): 313, 318–319.
56. “Catholics in Cleveland,” Time, September 30, 1935.
57
. “Text of Sermon by Cardinal Hayes Denouncing Birth Control Advocates,” New York Times, December 9, 1935, 5.
58. See Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 57.
59. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom, 223.
60. Quoted in McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom, 223.
61. Patrick J. Ward, “Memorandum to Father [John] Burke,” February 20, 1926, Box 117, Folder 4, Records of the Office of the General Secretary, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Office of the General Secretary, American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives (hereafter ACUA), Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. This incident is also cited and analyzed in Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 46.
62. Ward, “Memorandum to Father [John] Burke,” ACUA (emphasis in original).
63. Ibid.
64. Sanger, untitled address, in Birth Control: Proceedings, 172.
65. The renowned philosopher George Santayana had used the “solvent” language as early as 1916, predicting happily “that American freedoms would act as a ‘solvent’ upon Catholic distinctiveness”; cited in McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom, 165.
66. William R. Inge, “Catholic Church and Anglo-Saxon Mind,” Atlantic Monthly 131 (April 1923): 442, 443, 444, 445, 446, 448.
67. “Ask Churches’ Aid for a Better Race,” New York Times, March 31, 1925, 7.
68. Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?,” Christian Work 102 (June 10, 1922): 716–722. The sermon was preached on May 21 of that year and has been reprinted numerous times.
69. “Dr. Fosdick Urges Birth Rate Control,” New York Times, December 5, 1927, 30. Fosdick continued to speak in favor of birth control; see, e.g., “Fosdick for Candor on Birth Control,” New York Times, November 20, 1929, 25. For more details on Fosdick’s support of birth control, see Robert Moats Miller, Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 429–432.
70. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Religion and Birth Control (New York: Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, 1929); reprinted from the June 19, 1929, issue of the Outlook and Independent.
71. Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 21.
72. John Haynes Holmes to Sanger, April 19, 1929, Box 69, reel 45, “Community Church of New York” file, Margaret Sanger Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
73. Sanger to Holmes, May 6, 1929; Holmes to Mrs. Walter Timme, September 29, 1930; Holmes to Sanger, June 1, 1931; Sanger to Holmes, June 9, 1931; Mortimer Haarstick to Sanger, February 10, 1932; Sanger to Haarstick, February 18, 1932, Box 69, reel 45, “Community Church of New York” file, Margaret Sanger Papers. Holmes to Timme, February 9, 1931; American Civil Liberties Union letter signed by Holmes et al., February 10, 1931, Box 69, reel 46, “Congressional campaign 71st Congress 1928-1932” file, folder 2, Margaret Sanger Papers.
74. “Birth Control,” Afro-American, February 9, 1923, 9; William N. Jones, “Day By Day: The Progress of Birth Control,” Afro-American April 18, 1925, 11; “Nannie Burroughs ‘Crazy,’ Dr. Clayton Powell Tells National Training School,” Afro-American June 18, 1932, 8.
75. “Birth Control Advocate Speaks to Large Audience at Public Library,” New York Amsterdam News, March 7, 1923, 1; “Mrs. Margaret Sanger’s Move Assures Birth Control Clinic for Harlemites,” New York Amsterdam News, October 16, 1929, 3; “Research Bureau Has ‘Open House,’” New York Amsterdam News, November 26, 1930, 11; “The Feminist Viewpoint,” New York Amsterdam News, June 15, 1932, 5.
76. “The Birth Control Thunder-Bolt Strikes the Church,” Atlanta Daily World, October 27, 1934, 2.
77. “Questionnaire by Sidney L. Lasell Jr.,” February 13, 1934, in Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger 2:278.
78. Earl Conrad, “American Viewpoint: On U.S. Birth and Bias Control,” Chicago Defender, September 22, 1945, 11; Martin Luther King Jr., “Family Planning—A Special and Urgent Concern,” speech upon accepting the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Margaret Sanger Award, May 5, 1966, reprinted by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 2004. On the rebranding of birth control as “family planning” in the early 1940s, see Chesler, Woman of Valor, 393.
79. The Lambeth Conference Resolutions Archive from 1930 (Anglican Consultative Council, 2016): http://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/document-library/lambeth-conference/1930/resolution-15-the-life-and-witness-of-the-christian-community-marriage?author=Lambeth+Conference&year=1930.
80. T. S. Eliot, Thoughts After Lambeth (London: Faber and Faber, 1931), 17.
81. J. Conway Davies, “Lambeth, Sex, and Romanticism,” Church Quarterly Review 114 (1932): 60, 64, and 66.
82. Ibid., 78 and 79.
83. See also Chesler, Woman of Valor, 318–320.
84. “Birth Control: Protestant View (Full Text of Federal Council Report),” Current History 34, no.1 (April 1931): 97–100; quotes on 97, 100, 99, 100. While the full text of the Federal Council Committee Report notes that all but three committee members signed the document, an informal listing elsewhere suggests that an additional three committee members offered “no judgment,” presumably meaning they were not signatories after all. Those three are listed as the Rev. Charles K. Gilbert, suffragan bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of New York; the Rev. Dr. Ben R. Lacy, president of Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia; and Mrs. W. A. Newell of Greensboro, North Carolina, the chair of the Bureau of Service of the Women’s Missionary Council of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. “Vote of Com. On Marriage & The Home of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America,” Box 110, reel 72, “FCCC” file, Margaret Sanger Papers.
85. “Birth Control: Protestant View,” 98, 99, 100.
86. Russell J. Clinchy, “Birth Control: An Exposition of the Federal Council Report,” Congregationalist and Herald of Gospel Liberty, May 28, 1931, 714, 721.
87. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Report of the Federal Council of Churches on Birth Control,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works vol. 10, Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928-1931, trans. Douglas W. Stott, ed. Clifford J. Green (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 437.
88. Kennedy, Birth Control in America, 164, 170.
89. Worth M. Tippy to Sanger, April 14, 1931; Sanger to Tippy, April 18, 1931, Box 11, reel 8, “Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, 1930-1940” file (folder 1, Oct. 1930–Dec. 1934), Margaret Sanger Papers.
90. Sanger to George Blumenthal, July 7, 1933; Sanger to Tippy, August 8, 1933, “Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, 1930-1940” file (folder 1), Margaret Sanger Papers.
91. Committee on Marriage and the Home, A Bibliography on Young People’s Relationships, Marriage and Family Life (New York: Commission on the Church and Social Service, Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, 1932), 3.
92. “The Federal Council’s ‘Tainted Contacts,’” Sunday School Times, August 13, 1932, 422, 426.
93. Cited in Reed, Birth Control Movement, 240.
94. “State-Aided Birth Control Clinic Opened, First Subsidized Project in New York,” New York Times, January 24, 1940, 22.
95. For helpful correctives to over-readings of Sanger as a thoroughgoing eugenicist, see Baker, Margaret Sanger, 3–5 and passim; and Chesler, Woman of Valor, 195–196 and 214–217.
CHAPTER 2
1. Examples of immediate news coverage include “Two Found Guilty, Sentenced in Sale of ‘Obscene’ Books,” Atlanta Constitution, November 26, 1929, 5; and “Notables Testify for Booksellers,” New York Times, December 20, 1929, 32. See also “Introduction: D. H. Lawrence and the ‘Censor Morons,’” in D. H. Lawrence, Sex, Literature, and Censorship: Essays, ed. Harry T. Moore (New York: Twayne, 1953), 25.
2. DeLacey quoted in “Notables Testify for Booksellers”; Bushnell quoted in “Cambridge Bookseller Gets a Month in Jail and $500 Fine for Sale of ‘Obscene’ Volume,” New York Times, December 21, 1929, 1.
3. “Cambridge Bookseller Gets a Month in Jail”;
Bushnell quoted in “Judge Revokes ‘Obscene’ Book Case Sentence,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 6, 1930, 4. See also “Boston Bookseller Freed of Jail Term,” New York Times, June 6, 1930, 16. “Watch, Ward Society to Investigate Self,” Atlanta Constitution, January 14, 1930, 2. For a fuller account of these events and the larger context of the Watch and Ward Society, see Neil Miller, Banned in Boston: The Watch and Ward Society’s Crusade Against Books, Burlesque, and the Social Evil (Boston: Beacon, 2010).
4. The story of Watch and Ward’s invitation to the cardinal is told in Miller, Banned in Boston, 129.
5. All quoted in Paul S. Boyer, Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 200, 202, 206.
6. John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (New York: Counterpoint, 2005), 13.
7. Brenda Maddox, The Married Man: A Life of D. H. Lawrence (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994), 101.
8. Recounted in ibid., 220.
9. Detailed in ibid., 292–293.
10. D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love (1920; reprint, New York: Dover, 2002), iii.
11. D. H. Lawrence, “Making Pictures,” in Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished, and Other Prose Works by D. H. Lawrence, ed. Warren Roberts and Harry T. Moore (New York: Viking, 1968), 606; D. H. Lawrence, Letters V 648, quoted in D. H. Lawrence’s Paintings, with introduction by Keith Sagar (London: Chaucer, 2003), 43; Lawrence, Letters VI 406, cited in Paintings, 47; Michael Squires and Lynn K. Talbot, Living at the Edge: A Biography of D. H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 357.
12. “D. H. Lawrence as Painter,” Daily Express (London), June 17, 1929, 11; “Police Seize 12 Paintings,” Daily Mirror (London), July 6, 1929, 3; “D. H. Lawrence’s Art Seized in Police Raid,” New York Times, July 6, 1929, 4; “Exhibition Ban on Pictures: Court Sequel to a Raid on a London Gallery,” Daily Mirror, August 9, 1929, 18; “Magistrate Orders Prints of D. H. Lawrence Paintings to Be Destroyed,” Daily Express, August 9, 1929, 9; “Frees Lawrence Pictures: London Court Orders Seized Work of Novelist Returned,” New York Times, August 9, 1929, 6. Worthen, D. H. Lawrence, 399, 400. Lawrence quoted in Edward de Grazia, Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius (New York: Vintage, 1992), 88.
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