Margaret Sanger, 1879-1966

Margaret-Sanger-WWP

Margaret Sanger sculpture by Joy Buba. Presented in the National Portrait Gallery. Photo credit - WWP team

The founder of the birth control movement in the US, an activist, a writer, a nurse, and a sex educator in the early 20th century.



Born in 1879 to a working-class Irish Catholic family in Corning, NY, the 6th of 11 children. Her mother had 18 pregnancies in 22 years and died at the age of 50, which impacted Margaret tremendously, and so she decided to become a nurse. Sanger went to college, got married, had three children, and in 1911 moved to NYC. During this time, as a nurse, she encountered the horrible results of unsafe, self-induced, and back-alley abortions of unwanted pregnancies, which were illegal in those days.

Due to her profession, women were reaching out to her, asking for her knowledge to prevent pregnancies. She got involved in women’s rights activities for fair labor and equality and became part of the bohemian life of Greenwich Village. All of this led her to realize that the only way to change women’s status, enjoy their sexuality, reduce poverty, and allow women more freedom is to educate them to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and this became her life mission.

Key events in her life, courage, innovative thinking, and strong desire to change women’s lives led Margaret Sanger to establish the Birth Control Movement in the US during the early 20th century by educating women to prevent unwanted pregnancies. She wrote a series of columns about sex education in the New York Call (1911-1913) and in 1914, launched “The Woman Rebel” newsletter describing actual methods for contraception, there she started to use, for the first time, the term birth control. Her publications caused a sensation and were considered illegal due to the information about contraception, so she left for Europe and stayed there for a while, studying the methods and options of birth control available in Europe.

After her return, Sanger opened the first Family Planning and Birth Control Clinic in Brooklyn in 1916 and got arrested several times. In 1918 her appeal changed the law to allow doctors to prescribe contraception, and in 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League. Over the years, she founded more organizations, opened birth control clinics, and in 1948 helped to found the International Committee on Planned Parenthood, which evolved into the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

She lectured all over the world and wrote several books about birth control. Her last achievement before she died in 1966, was to support the research of the birth control pill (which was funded with a donation by Katharine McCormick) and get it to public use in 1960.

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“Every woman is the absolute mistress of her own body.”

“Every woman is the absolute mistress of her own body.”

Fun Facts

  • Her second husband smuggled diaphragms from Europe into New York through Canada. He later became the first legal manufacturer of diaphragms in the US.
  • Her sister, Ethel Byrne, got arrested with her in 1917. She was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse, but went on a hunger strike. She was the first woman hunger striker in the US to be force-fed.
  • She supported preventing pregnancies and objected to abortions, “Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent.”
  • The character of Wonder Woman was inspired by Sanger.
  • Her papers can be found at New York University's history department and Smith College.
  • Several clinics and places are named after her, like Margaret Sanger Square in NYC's NoHo area, and Planned Parenthood headquarters on Bleecker Street in NYC.

Awards

  • In 1966, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America established an award to honor her legacy
  • Nominated as the Humanist of the Year in 1957 by the American Humanist Association
  • Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 31 times
  • Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame (1981)

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Category: Academy & Education, Activism & Feminism, Business & Entrepreneurship, and Health
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Arts

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1874-1948

A socialite and philanthropist. The co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and its biggest donor.

Abigail Aldrich Rockefeller was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Her father was a Republican senator, and she grew up traveling back and forth between Rhode Island and Washington, DC. She was educated by a Quaker governess till she was 17 years old, and then attended Miss Abbott’s School for Young Ladies in Providence. During her upbringing, she was introduced to socialite and political circles, and at 19 years old, she made her official social debut. The following year, she embarked on an extensive European tour, where she visited many museums and art galleries and began to sharpen her skills as an art collector. At 20 years old, she met John Davison Rockefeller Jr., the son of the businessman and philanthropist John Davison Rockefeller Sr. After five years of courtship, the couple married at a big society wedding. The young Rockefellers settled in NYC, first in 13 W. 54th Street in Manhattan and later in 10 W. 54th Street. Rockefeller was a philanthropist in the heart, and she devoted herself to various charities. She donated money to the girl scouts, chaired the Auxiliary 336 of the American Red Cross, was a member of the Young Women’s Christian Association National Board, and served as chairman of different committees of the organization. In 1918, Rockefeller was chosen to chair the Housing Committee of the War Work Council, in which she worked for the improvement of living conditions for working women. She later applied the concept to the employees of Standard Oil – her husband’s family firm, purchasing land and building homes for the workers as well as a Community Center that included a clinic, nursery school, gym, and even a bowling alley. In 1925, Rockefeller revived her love for art and began collecting paintings and drawings mainly of contemporary American artists as well as European modernists such as Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Within a few years, she converted part of the room in her 7th floor Manhattan apartment into a gallery, where visitors could view the art on display. In 1929, alongside Lillie P. Bliss, Mary Quinn Sullivan, she co-founded the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NYC – the first museum in the US devoted entirely to the modern movement. Rockefeller held several positions in the museum management team, from treasurer to Vice-President and Vice-Chairman, as well as served in its committees. She pushed for establishing the museum’s film library and for the War Veterans’ Art Center – a rehabilitation program for WW2 veterans through art. Rockefeller’s dedication to art expanded outside of MoMA; she donated art pieces to other institutes, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Met Cloisters, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Ludwell-Paradise House at Colonial Williamsburg. She passed away after suffering a heart attack at the age of 73. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Ada Louise Huxtable WWP
Arts

Ada Louise Huxtable, 1921-2013

An architecture critic and a writer. Received the first-ever Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Born Ada Louise Landman in NYC, an only child in a middle-class Jewish family. Growing up in Manhattan, Huxtable loved strolling along the streets, fascinated by its building, such as the Grand Central Terminal, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Natural History. She studied art at Hunter College, graduating magna cum laude, and then architectural history at NYU Institute of Fine Arts. At the time, she worked in Bloomingdale’s furnishings department, where she met her soon-to-be husband, Garth Huxtable. In 1946, at 25, Huxtable landed a job as an assistant curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. After five years, she left her job to study Italian architecture in Italy for a year. Upon her return, she began writing as a contributing editor for various art and architectural journals. At the age of 37, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, in which she examined the structural and design advances of American architecture. In 1963, 42 years old Huxtable was hired as the first architecture critic at The New York Times, a position she held for almost 20 years. In her column, she wrote about new and old buildings, threatened buildings, and bad-designed buildings. She also mentioned emerging architects, architectural trends, movements, and exhibitions. Huxtable encouraged the everyday readers to look at buildings from a new perspective, not as an assembly of bricks and pilasters but as a public statement with history and meaning. Raising awareness of the city’s heritage, the urban environment, and civic engagement, she set the tone for modern architecture criticism, for which, at the age of 49, she was the first-ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In 1981, at the age of 60, Huxtable received a MacArthur grant that allowed her in-depth research on subjects she was interested in, such as the development of the skyscraper, the negative impact of postmodernism building, and preservation vs. modernity. At 76, she returned to writing for the public as an architecture critic for The Wall Street Journal, publishing columns for the next 15 years. Throughout her career, Huxtable was involved in various committees, serving as a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Architectural Selection and Building Design Committees for the Getty Center, Getty Villa, and as a Jury member for The Pritzker Architecture Prize. She published more than 10 books on architecture, including “Kicked a Building Lately?,” “Goodbye History,” “Hello Hamburger,” and a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright. Huxtable died in NYC at 91. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Adelina-Otero-Warren-WWP
Activism & Feminism

Adelina Otero-Warren, 1881-1965

A suffrage leader, educator, and politician. The first Latina to run for US Congress and one of the first’s women to serve as a government official in New Mexico.

Adelina “Nina” Otero Warren was born near Los Lunas, New Mexico. Her family was among the early settlers in New Mexico, and her parents were part of the Hispanic elite. When she was 2 years old, her father was killed by an Anglo squatter. A few years later, her mother married an English businessman, and she grew up in a multicultural environment. She was influenced by her mother, who was an advocate for social and educational developments and served as the director of Santa Fe’s Board of Education. At 16, the family relocated to Santa Fe, where she became a socialite. At the age of 26, she married Lieutenant Rawson D. Warren, a cavalry officer who was nine years older than her. Though the marriage did not last long, she kept her x-husband’s last name and called herself a widow, so she would not be stigmatized as a divorced woman.   At 31, Nina moved to NYC to keep house for her brother. There, she became active in Anne Morgan’s settlement house, working alongside the famous suffragist Alice Paul and organizing crafts programs for working-class women. Two years later, her mother died, and Nina returned to Santa Fe to take care of her half-siblings. Upon her arrival, she started working for the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. Soon she became the first Mexican-American state leader of the Congressional Union in New Mexico, raising support from the Spanish-speaking community as well as from the English-speaking community. Using her family connections, she was a successful lobbyist for voting in favor of the Nineteenth Amendment, and she had a key role in its ratification in 1920. In 1922, at the age of 41, Nina ran as the Republican Party nominee for New Mexico to the US House of Representatives – The first Latina to run for the US Congress. During her campaign, she spoke Spanish and advocated for the improvement of education, health care, and welfare services, as well as for the preservation of Hispano heritage and culture. Ultimately, she lost the election by less than 9%, probably because it was discovered that she was a divorcee, not a widow. In 1917 Nina was appointed as the Santa Fe Superintendent of Instruction – one of the first women to serve as government officials in New Mexico. In her 12 years in office, she worked tirelessly to improve the education of Hispano. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Adena Friedman WWP
Economics & Finance

Adena Friedman, 1969

A businesswoman, the president and CEO of Nasdaq, the first woman in this position and to lead a global exchange.

Born Adena Robinson Testa in Baltimore, Maryland. She earned her BA in political science from Williams College in Massachusetts and an MBA from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. In 1993, at the age of 24, she married Michael Cameron Friedman. In that same year, she joined Nasdaq as an intern and soon began moving up. In her first 18 years at Nasdaq, Friedman served in various positions, such as marketing manager, head of data products, head of corporate strategy, and Chief Financial Officer. In 2011, at 42, Friedman left Nasdaq to join Carlyle Group, a private investment firm in Washington DC. There, she served as Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director. After three years, she returned to Nasdaq as president and Chief Operating Officer. In 2017, in addition to her role as president, 48 years old Freidman was appointed CEO of the Nasdaq. The first woman in this position and the first woman to lead a global exchange. She oversees the company’s business segments, focusing on efficiency, product development, expansion, and growth. Under her leadership, Nasdaq transformed into a leading global exchange and technology solutions company, operating across six continents. In addition to her work in Nasdaq, Freidman is also a member of several boards. Among them are – the board of directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the board of FCLTGlobal – a non-profit organization that works on ways to encourage long-term investing, and the board of Greater Washington, DC. A Chapter of Junior Achievement – a non-profit organization that supports teens in their way to financial independence. Freidman often speaks about women in leadership positions, advocating for mentoring and creating career opportunities for women in the financial industry. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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