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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - III. Population and Migration - 7. Population - 7. Birth Control Facilities for Negroes
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i8o An American Dilemma
toward state support with federal aid. Sometimes the patients pay a nominal
fee.
Most of the 452 privately supported birth control clinics in the United
States in 1942 were under the sponsorship of the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America or its local affiliates. Most of these are in cities. The
Harlem section of New York got a clinic in 1930. The Federation—with
funds made available by a white philanthropist—is conducting two demon-
stration projects important to Negroes: one in urban Nashville, Tennessee,
and the other in rural Berkeley County, South Carolina. Both projects are
for Negroes only. The Federation has a Division of Negro Service whose
primary function is educational. Aided by a national Negro Advisory
Council of 34 eminent Negro leaders, it works through the Urban Leagues,
Negro doctors and nurses, the National Hospital Association, the Negro
press and Negro clubwomen.®^ Some 200 of the Negro Jeanes teachers
have requested information of the Federation’s Division of Negro Service,
as have hundreds of Southern white health officers and doctors.^®
The activity of the birth control movement’s workers, the Southern
whites, and the Negro leaders—all with the same aim of spreading birth
control among Negroes—promises a great development of the movement
in the future. Since few Negroes are Catholics, and since they do not live
in areas where Catholics predominate, the chief remaining weakness, as
far as Negroes are concerned, is the lack of funds for educational work.
It would seem that, more and more, the Southern states are on the way to
making public funds available for birth control work. Too, it is likely that
philanthropy will be more willing to come into this field since it has become
legal and popularly acceptable in the last five years.
A more serious difficulty is that of educating Southern Negroes to the
advantages of birth control. Negroes, on the whole, have all the prejudices
against it that other poor, ignorant, superstitious people have.®’ More
serious is the fact that even when they do accept it, they are not very
efficient in obeying instructions and sometimes they come to feel that it is
a fake.®® An intensive educational campaign is needed, giving special recog-
nition to the prejudices and ignorance of the people whom the campaign
is to benefit. The use of Negro doctors and nurses is essential.
With the growing popular and legal acceptance of birth control, it would
seem that a shift in emphasis is needed.®® None of the present activities
should be cut out, but the time has come for more direct and more wide-
spread educational work. The birth control organizations, having been
stung so many times, are chary of direct propaganda that might antagonize
doctors and others among the ‘^best people.” It is true that they seek to
reach the masses of Negroes through the Urban Leagues, Negro news-
papers, Jeanes teachers, and Negro clubwomen. But they only tell people
tp a dpctpr and so do not get over the fact that there are more easily
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