Seeking an Original Document: "Suggestions for the Negro Project."

May 4, 2011 12:52 PM

Help me find this document! "Suggestions for the Negro Project," allegedly sent by Clarence Gamble (of Proctor and Gamble) to Margaret Sanger. It is often mentioned on the internet in connection with the claim that Planned Parenthood began as a program in racist eugenics.

I can't get Google to give me anything other than blogs and pro-life websites. I'd like to evaluate the documents themselves, if indeed they exist.

posted by anotherpanacea to Society & Culture (7 answers total)

Harvard's Countway Library of Medicine has some of Gamble's papers. You could try contacting them.
posted by Ideefixe at 12:59 PM on May 4, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks! I've asked them.
posted by anotherpanacea at 1:15 PM on May 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

You could also contact the Margaret Sanger Papers Project.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:16 PM on May 4, 2011

I suspect this letter is either in the Margaret Sanger Collection at the Library of Congress (which is what one the citations online says) or at the Neilson Library at Smith College.

It also seems like the letter is quoted in this book:
Marshall, Robert G, and Charles A. Donovan. Blessed Are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991.
posted by bluedaisy at 1:26 PM on May 4, 2011

The letter was written in November, 1939.
posted by bluedaisy at 1:28 PM on May 4, 2011

I can't find the text of it online, but it's excerpted on this Planned Parenthood of NJ Margaret Sanger page, including more of the context of the quote.
posted by Mad_Carew at 2:38 PM on May 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks Mad_Carew. That's interesting, but it only includes the response from Sanger, not Gamble's initial letter.

I have also contacted the Sanger Papers Project, and if that fails I will head down the street and look at the papers in the Library of Congress. I love the Manuscript Division!
posted by anotherpanacea at 4:36 AM on May 5, 2011