Awesome Stuff Women Did

Opened the first legal birth control clinic in the U.S., and the first that was staffed entirely by female doctors and social workers, which received crucial grants from John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s Bureau of Social Hygiene from 1924 onward. Introduced the diaphragm to the the U.S., smuggling them from the Netherlands. Helped organize the first World Population Conference in Geneva. Opened a family planning clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist support for contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family planning to women who were denied access to their city’s health and social services. Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Urban League, and the black community’s elder statesman, W. E. B. Du Bois. Toured Europe, Africa and Asia in the 1960s lecturing and helping to establish clinics (Margaret Sanger)