“Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve.”

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higher education, keane college, margaret sanger, reproductive rights, speeches

Keene college lore credits Margaret Sanger with giving them the college’s motto, “Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve,” during a  speech at the college.

According to the verbal history, Principal Wallace Mason invited Sanger to speak to the students at Keene in 1912, when she was known for being a public health nurse and social reformer. At this time the school was known as Keene Teaching School.  During this speech Sanger told the women who attended the school that it was time for them to “enter to learn and go forth to serve.”

Mason liked this statement so much that he got the faculty’s approval to paint it on the west wall of the auditorium as the school motto. Later, it was inscribed on the Alumni Gate as a gift from the classes of 1910-1925.

Although we do not have a record of the speech itself the project does have evidence that Sanger spent time at Robert Pearman’s house, which was located near the college in new Hampshire, during the summer of 1912. The aforementioned speech at Keene may have occurred during this visit.

Sources:

Keene State Today

A Closer Look at 100 Years

Gandhi and Sanger Debate Love, Lust and Birth Control

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document, feminism, Gandhi, history, margaret sanger, reproductive rights

On November 14th India Today published an excerpt from Tohmas Weber’s book Going Native: Gandhi’s Relationship with Western Women. The excerpt, which talks about a meeting between Gandhi and Margaret Sanger was called Love lust and the Mahatma.

We decided to share some excerpts from Margaret Sanger’s journal about this same visit with Gandhi on the blog today. The rest of this document will be available in The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger: Volume Four.

Sanger on meeting Gandhi for the first time:

“We went directly to his place & met him, tho this is his day of silence. He rose to greet me smiling from ear to ear. I put down my bag & gloves & flowers & magazines in order to take both his hands. He has an ↑inward↓ light that shines in his face! that shines through the flesh! that circles around his head & neck like a mist, with white sails of a ship coming thru. It lasted only a few seconds but it is there. When I looked again it was only the shiney appearance of his flesh that I saw, but always the smile & the smile & a hospitable welcome.”

Sanger described the various foods that they ate on this trip at length in her journal entries. At one point she writes:

“[Gandhi] is experimenting with foods trying to find out the most economical foods for the village people & the most nourishment.  The great majority are living a life of starvation when you ask a villager how things are going, he points to his stomach & says ‘Salub stomach too long empty.’

One ‘full meal’ a day is their ambition.”

In regards to their conversations about sex and contraception:

“To my question Do you believe there is a difference between sex lust & sex love, his answer was “Yes”–“

“At three promptly we went to the Mahatranas house had our talk on the roof. He sat in the burning sunshine with a white cloth over his head we sat in the shade. The arguments were along the same line as the morning but I am convinced his personal experience at the time of his father’s death was so shocking & self blamed that he can never accept sex as anything good clean or wholesome.”

[Gandhi had been having sex with his wife at the time of his father’s death, this is the personal experience that Sanger refers to.]

We also have a transcript of some of their discussion:

MRS. SANGER: Mr. Gandhi, you and I have the interest of humanity at heart but while both of us have that thing in common, you have greater influence with the masses of humanity. I believe no nation can be free until its women have control over the power that is peculiarly theirs, I mean the power of procreation, that powerful force which allowed to run free has messed up the affairs of the world.

I believe that human nature is good in itself. I believe that men and women are essentially good. I believe that uncontrolled breeding has made the world a pretty sorry mess. I’ve read your books. I know your belief in continence and the importance you place upon it. Your influence stretches far beyond India. Your word means something to women in other countries besides India. Even the opposition at home often quotes you in opposing our legislative campaign for birth control. I have an invitation from the All India Women’s Conference to come to their meeting in December as guest speaker but you see it is really only a pretense to come to see you. The real reason I came is to see if we could not agree upon a fundamental principle and some practical means of helping the women of the world.

Women’s lack of control over fecundity results in over-population, in poverty, misery and war. Should women control this force which has made so much trouble in their lives? Have they a right to control the power of procreation? Do you see any practical solution for this problem which in my humble opinion is the direct cause of much of the chaos in the world today?

MR. GANDHI: I suppose you know that all my life I have been dinning into the ears of women the fact that they are their own mistresses, not only in this but in all matters. I began my work with my own wife. While I have abused my wife in many respects, I have tried to be her teacher also. If today she is somewhat literate it is because I became her teacher. I was not the ideal teacher because I was a brute. The animal passion in me was too strong and I could not become the ideal teacher. My wife I made the orbit of all women. In her I studied all women. I came in contact with many European women in South Africa but I knew practically every Indian woman there. I worked with them. I tried to show them they were not slaves either of their husbands or parents, that they had as much right to resist their husbands as their parents, not only in the political field but in the domestic as well. But the trouble was that some would not resist their husbands. I feel that I speak with some confidence and knowledge because I have worked with and talked with and studied many women.

But the remedy is in the hands of the women themselves. The struggle is difficult for them but I do not blame them. I blame the men. Men have legislated against them. Man has regarded woman as his tool. She has learned to be his tool and in the end found it easy and pleasurable to be such, because when one drags another in his fall the descent is easy.

The full transcript is located online in the Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter #23.

The outcome of this meeting is outlined at the end of the India Today article:

“In an article on birth control that appeared in his paper only a few months later, Gandhi reiterated that he would agree to at least consider the rhythm method of birth control, even though he did it reluctantly. Although she had no luck in convincing Gandhi of her position, her lecture tour of India led to the opening of several birth control clinics in the country. When, in 1959, Prime Minister Nehru declared that a large sum of money would go to family planning in India, Margaret Sanger was standing at his side.”

Times-Herald Record on Sanger

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feminism, history, margaret sanger, news, reproductive rights

Allison Berman wrote about Margaret Sanger in an article for the Times-Herald Record last week:

“The Comstock Laws (1873) made disseminating reproductive information through the mail illegal, as was contraceptive usage even for married couples. Women lacked the information and power to make decisions regarding their bodies — be it to procreate or to use “birth control,” a term coined by Margaret Sanger.

Sanger was a pioneer in woman’s reproductive rights, who penned and actively disseminated “Family Limitations,” and who was active in the creation of the first oral contraceptive, which the FDA approved 50 years ago.

“The Pill” is now so universal a medication, it isn’t described by purpose or brand. By 1965, it was the country’s most popular form of reversible birth control, empowering women with the capacity to be responsible for their own bodies.

Women now had options. Some married but delayed childbearing. Others delayed marriage or chose not to marry.”

Read more here!

The First American Birth Control Conference

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arrest, birth control, first birth control conference, free speech, history, police, sanger

Notes and program from the Conference that belonged to Dr. Adolph Meyer, a Swiss Psychiatrist from Johns Hopkins.

This weekend marks the 89th anniversary (November 11th – 13th 1921) of the First American Birth Control Conference, organized by Margaret Sanger. The conference took place at the Plaza Hotel, known as the Hotel Plaza then, in New York City. Over the course of the three day conference prominent scientists, physicians, demographers, and eugenicists, as well as social workers, birth control advocates and socialites gathered to discuss the global ramifications of birth control and its potential to lessen the major social ills of the world. The conference also launched the American Birth Control League (ABCL) to promote birth control through education and lobbying.

In her opening speech at the Conference, Sanger made some interesting points about the importance of exchanging ideas, the diverse perspectives of the crowd, and about the necessity of birth control:

“The idea in calling this Conference was to bring together not our old friends, the advocates of Birth Control, whose worth we know and whose courage has stood the test of opposition; but rather to bring together new people, with other ideas, the people who have been working in social agencies and in other groups for the same results as we, namely a better nation and the banishment of disease, misery, poverty, delinquency and crime.”

“There are two instincts which have ever guided the destiny of mankind. These instincts are hunger and sex. The instinct of hunger has received consideration in practically every civilized country and man has adapted his institutions to meet its needs. But the instinct of sex has been ignored. Not I claim, and most of us who make a study of the subject know, that this instinct is just as deep, just as fundamental, as the instinct of hunger. It cannot be crushed. It cannot be denied. But we must understand it. We will then utilize it, as we utilize music and prayer for out highest powers and for higher illumination.”

“Our definite aim is to repeal the laws so that the medical profession may give women at their request knowledge to prevent conception. We believe that with the assistance of the intelligent members of the community we can bring this about in a very short time, but we need your help. We need your courage. We need you to come out and stand with us on out platform. We also want your guidance, your assistance, your suggestions.”

[Read the full speech here.]

On the last day of the conference Margaret Sanger was arrested alongside Mary Windsor for attempting to prevent police from shutting down the closing event, a public birth control meeting at the Town Hall Theater in Manhattan. The meeting, which was titled “Birth Control – Is It Moral?”  was going to feature a speech by Dr. Karl Reiland, a Rector at Saint George’s Church in New York City followed by a discussion lead by Margaret Sanger and Mr. Harold Cox, a British economist and former Conservative Member of Parliament.

Photo Credit: Town Hall Theater Facebook Page

Police Captain Thomas Donahue ordered the doors to the Town Hall theater locked just minutes before the meeting was to begin. When police were forced to unlock the doors a short time later to let out the crowd that had already gathered in the hall, many outside, including Sanger, burst in.

Sanger quickly took the podium, and when she began to speak, Donahue ordered her arrest. Other activists then sought the stage, and one of them, Mary Winsor, a member of the new ABCL National Council, was also arrested.

They were arrested under charges of disorderly conduct and taken to the 47th Street Police Station, where a riot broke out among the crowd of supporters that followed them there. According to an article in The World: “A great crowd followed the prisoners from the Town Hall when police reserves were called in the clear the hall and marched to the station. Down 43rd street to Broadway, 3,000 strong, they went, singing loudly, ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of No Liberty.’ ” (“Arrest Break Up Town Hall Rally for Birth Control.” November 14th, 1921.)

Both were discharged soon after for lack of evidence. “I consider my arrest,” Sanger said upon leaving the police station, “in violation of every principle of liberty that America stands for, and I shall take this case to the highest courts, if necessary, to preclude the possibility of it ever happening again.”

Click here for a Paper’s Project Newsletter article with more information about the event.

Setting the Record Straight

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feminism, history, margaret sanger, myths, reproductive rights

In an article printed on the New York Times website on October 29th the author prints a popular fallacy about Sanger in reference to comments made by the director of Pro-Life Pregnancy Center, Expectant Mother Care.

“Almost as an afterthought, she told me that Margaret Sanger, the hero of the reproductive rights movement, had ties to the Third Reich.”

While the article goes on to provide links to scientific information disproving claims about a link between abortion and breast cancer, as well as claims about the existence of “post-abortive syndrome” it never corrects the characterization of Sanger.

Comments like this, allowed to go uncorrected, are problematic because most people will not take the time to research them on their own – that it was printed in the New York Times, without comment, is enough for them. Furthermore, even the people who do go on to do further research may be lead astray by the many webpages out there that falsify documents and photographs to support this fallacy. There are websites out there, for instance, whose sole purpose is to encourage people to produce writings and artwork that ties Sanger to the KKK and the Nazi Movement; the  material published on these websites is copied to other internet sites, often without any attribution of understanding that it is fictional.

This obviously photoshopped image is the perfect example of the material created to confuse people. Sanger and Hitler never actually met, nor did they agree with or like one another.

In the interest of historical accuracy, here are Sanger’s feelings about Hitler in her own words:

“The first thing I want to say in relation to my attitude regarding the present War and World Peace is that before Hitler came into power in Germany I was one of the few Americans who joined the Anti-Nazi Committee and gave money, my name and any influence I had with writers and others, to combat Hitler’s rise to power in Germany.”

“When Hitler got into the saddle and burned all books he considered (not immoral) but dangerous to the State, my three books were destroyed and have not been allowed to circulate in Germany. The publisher and translator were put into concentration camps and I have never heard of them since.”

“I firmly believe that Europe will not have a just Peace until Germany gets rid of Hitler, but also shall Italy, England and France get rid of their own leaders whom History will certainly identify as War Lords.”

Click here to read a more detailed article, from the Papers Project’s 2003 Winter Newsletter, about the Sanger-Hitler Equation.

Just to be clear: Margaret Sanger was firmly against the Nazi Party from the beginning, and Hitler was against Sanger. She had no ties to the Third Reich whatsoever.

Source:

Margaret Sanger, ” [Hitler and War] ,” [1939] . Typed draft statement. Source: Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College , MSM S72:0122 .