The Afro-American community and the birth control movement, 1918

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Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
1-1-1991
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Jessie M. Rodrique
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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THE AFRO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY AND THE BIRTH CONTROL MOVEMENT
1918-1942
A Dissertation Presented
by
JESSIE M. RODRIQUE
Submitted to the Graduate School of the
University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
May 1991
History Department
@ Copyright by Jessie M. Rodrique
All Rights Reserved
THE AFRO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY AND THE BIRTH CONTROL MOVEMENT
1918-1942
A Dissertation Presented
by
JESSIE M. RODRIQUE
Approved as to style and content by
uoyce~ Berkman, Chair
A~.
JcMin^Bracey Member 7
,
Bruce Laurie, Member
JacklTager, Member
Robert Jones, Department Head
^
History
ABSTRACT
THE AFRO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY AND THE BIRTH CONTROL MOVEMENT
1918-1942
MAY 1991
JESSIE M. RODRIQUE B.A., ASSUMPTION COLLEGE
,
Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS
Directed by: Professor Joyce A. Berkman
This dissertation examines the role of Afro-Americans
in the U.S. birth control movement in the years between
1918-1942. It argues that Afro-Americans of all classes not
only supported the idea of birth control but were also a
significant force in shaping the national birth control
debate, educating their communities and delivering
contraceptives to women. During a period when white advocacy
of birth control became increasingly conservative, black
birth control advocates advanced a broad, often radical,
rationale for contraception. While the black and white
communities often worked together to provide services to
black women in many locations throughout the country, Afro-
Americans worked independently of the national, white
dominated birth control organizations. Additionally, the
iv
organizational strategies of Afro-American birth control
advocates were found to be different from those of their
white counterparts. The differences were due, in part, to
Afro-Americans' strong community orientation, their belief
in each person's right to good health and that the state
should provide health care, and their nonhierarchial
approach to the "professional's" relationship with other
health providers and birth control users.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT iv
Chapter
INTRODUCTION
1
THE AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL MOVEMENT:
1.
...
ITS SCHOLARS, BACKGROUND AND ADVOCATES. 15
2. THE AFRO-AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL MOVEMENT
OF THE TWENTIES 59
3. THE AFRO-AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL MOVEMENT
....
OF THE THIRTIES: GROWTH AND EVOLUTION 86
AFRO-AMERICAN CLINICS: HARLEM AS A CASE STUDY. 135
4.
.
AFRO-AMERICAN CLINICS: THE NATION 163
5.
CONCLUSION 218
6.
APPENDIX: NATIONAL SPONSORING COMMITTEE, DIVISION
OF NEGRO SERVICE, 1942 223
225
BIBLIOGRAPHY
vi
INTRODUCTION
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
the birth rate declined significantly among white and black
Americans. Among Afro-Americans, the growth of their
population by World War II was more than cut in half. By
1945 the average number of children per women was 2.5, and
the degree of childlessness, especially among urban blacks,
had reached unprecedented proportions. Among native, white
American women the fertility rate "fell from 7.04 in 1800 to
4.24 in 1880 and 3.56 in 1900. "2 By 1900 the fertility rate
was half of what it was a century before. 3 Among these white
women, scholars interpret the demographic changes as
deliberate. Contraception is assumed to be a contributing
1 Reynolds Farley, Growth of the Black Population
(Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1970), 3, 75; Stanley
Engerman, "Changes in Black Fertility, 1880-1940," in Family
and Population in Nineteenth Century America ed. Tamara K.
Hareven and Maris Vinovskis (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1978), chapter 3; E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro
Family in Chicago (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1932), 136-146.
2 Linda Gordon, Woman's Body Woman's Right:
A Social History of Birth Control in America (New York:
Penguin Books, 1974), 154.
3 John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate
Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper
Row Publishers, 1988), 173.
&
2
factor. By contrast, among black Americans the population
decline is not seen as deliberate. Rather, the decline is
attributed to the inferior health of black women and men.
Very rarely is it explained as a result of deliberate
contraceptive use, despite studies by a handful of
demographers in the mid thirties who correctly hypothesized
its use among Afro-Americans/ What, then, were the reasons
for the declining birth rate of black Americans from late
nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century? Is there a valid
basis for the incongruence of interpretations for declining
birth rates in the black and white communities?
Profound changes in the demographics and sexual
ideology of native, white Americans preceded the advent of
the modern birth control movement, which was an organized
social movement that sought to expand reproductive choices
for women through the distribution of mechanical means of
contraception. The rise of the birth control movement is
usually correlated to the simultaneous onset of urbanization
and industrialization. However, birth rates per family began
For a review of the demographic literature, see
Joseph McFalls and George Masnick, "Birth Control and the
Fertility of the U.S. Black Population, 1880 to 1980,"
Journal of Family History 6 (1981); 89-106; Peter Uhlenberg,
"Negro Fertility Patterns in the United States," Berkeley
Journal of Sociology 11 (1966): 56; James Reed, "Birth
Control in American Social Science," in From Private Vice To
Public Virtue (New York: Basic Books, 1978): 197-210.