Black ministers petition Smithsonian to remove bust of Margaret Sanger
Now that the left is demanding no memorializing of those who defended slavery and racism, it is time to turn the spotlight on Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who sought to use abortion and birth control to limit the black population as undesirables. Sanger was openly and explicitly racist, and her eugenics movement enjoyed the support of progressives of the era. It is no coincidence that today Planned Parenthood aborts a much higher percentage of black babies than the black share of the U.S. population.
STAND, a group of conservative black ministers headed by Bishop E.W. Jackson, has sent a lettter to the Smithsonian Institution demanding that a bust of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, be removed from an exhibit. It reads, in part:
We are writing to ask that Margaret Sanger’s likeness be removed from all National Portrait Gallery exhibits. Her bust should not be part of the Gallery’s “Struggle for Justice” exhibit, which honors "great achievements...striking down long-standing segregationist practices and discrimination in American society.” Ms. Sanger may have been a lot of things, but a “champion of justice” she definitely was not.
Perhaps the Gallery is unaware that Ms. Sanger supported black eugenics, a racist attitude toward black and other minority babies; an elitist attitude toward those she regarded as “the feeble minded;" speaking at rallies of Ku Klux Klan women; and communications with Hitler sympathizers. Also, the notorious “Negro Project” which sought to limit, if not eliminate, black births, was her brainchild. Despite these well- documented facts of history, her bust sits proudly in your gallery as a hero of justice. The obvious incongruity is staggering!
Perhaps your institution is a victim of propaganda advanced by those who support abortion. Nevertheless, a prestigious institution like the National Portrait Gallery should have higher standards and subject its honorees to higher scrutiny.
Relegating Margaret Sanger to the camp of racists, and demanding that she no longer be honored, puts the Democrats, and especially Hillary Clinton, in a difficult spot. Hillary is on the record accepting Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award:
“I admire Margaret Sanger enormously,” Secretary Clinton had said in March [2009], “her courage, her tenacity, her vision . . . And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her.”
Assuming that Hillary is the Democrats’ nominee, she will depend on black turnout nearly equaling the levels enjoyed by President Obama in his two runs. Her words of admiration for Margaret Sanger can easily be turned against her. But if she repudiates Sanger, she risks losing the support of Planned Parenthood, something she values so highly as to back away from criticism of the organization bow that its body parts business has been revealed.
Margaret Sanger’s memory ought to be as big an issue as the Confederate battle flag.