Margaret Sanger started the Negro Project in 1939 to bring safe contraceptives to Black communities. The initiative seems harmless and helpful, but its origin and philosophies might make you think otherwise.
The Negro Project was strongly influenced by the eugenics movement of the 1920s. British scientist Francis Galton believed that the human race could be improved by encouraging “well-born’’ people to have more children and discouraging everyone else. Black people were among the “everyone else.”
Guy Irving Birch, the director of the American Eugenics Society, wrote articles advocating for the use of birth control to prevent “the American people from being replaced by alien or Negro stock, whether it be by immigration or by overly high birth rates among others in this country.” But racism wasn’t the only reason.
Angela Davis described Margaret Sanger’s view of birth control. Davis said that Sanger saw “the chief issue of birth control’ as ‘more children from the fit, less from the unfit.’” This vision excluded Black people, people of color, low-income people, and also people with disabilities.
Many elements of health care have a history of anti-Blackness. White supremacy and its systems of oppression will not hesitate to keep using our bodies in its own interest. But we’re here and ain’t going nowhere.