Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
So-called “progressives” love moving forward with their reconstructed versions of history. The taxpayer-funded Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery is supposed to be a place that reveres history, not revises it. That hasn’t stopped the institution from presenting to the public a false presentation of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger.
The bust, prominently and ironically displayed in the NPG’s “Struggle For Justice” exhibit, was provided by the late Cordelia Scaife May. She was a very wealthy population control activist who “supported conservation and Planned Parenthood among other causes” according to her obituary in the Pittsburg Post Gazette. May founded the Laurel Foundation to promote the protection of animal and the rejection of human life. Upon her death, May bequeathed $400 million (almost half her fortune) to the Colcom Foundation, which currently pours millions into pro-abortion, anti-immigration, population control grantees such as Californians for Population Stabilization, Negative Population Growth, Population Media Center, and Progressives for Immigration Reform. The Colcom Foundation also funded Samuel Francis during May’s lifetime. As a Board Member and writer for the racist Council of Concerned Citizens; he wrote the organization’s Statement of Principles, which, in part, declare: “We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind.”
The parallels between May and Sanger are scary. Both were incredibly wealthy. Both were deeply anti-immigrant. Both despised large swaths of humanity and devoted their lives to their elimination through population control. Both lived lonely lives and died as alcoholics. I guess it’s quite fitting that the NPG accepted the gift of Sanger’s bust from someone exactly like her.
May’s affinity for Sanger’s depraved, anti-human worldview was verified by her brother who wrote in another obituary: “Cordy’s support of the Laurel Foundation came about because of her interest in conservation and population control. She was introduced to Margaret Sanger, who was the founder of the Planned Parenthood Federation, by our grandmother, Mary Magee Scaife.”
It’s no surprise that the Laurel Foundation funds the radically pro-abortion Women’s Law Project which if fighting to force taxpayers to pay for abortions through Medicaid. Medicaid’s composition is the following: 11.9% of the US white population (under 65 years of age) is on Medicaid while 31.3% of the black population, 32% of the Native American/Alaskan population, and 29.5% of the Hispanic population are dependent upon Medicaid services. Notice any disparity? The Women’s Law Project, in their current Laurel Foundation-funded effort to repeal the Hyde Amendment entitled Removing Barriers to Medicaid-Funded Abortion, claimed: “Lack of access to Medicaid-funded abortions endangers low-income women’s health and the well-being of their families.”
The public lacks access to the truth, thanks to the Smithsonian.
Nowhere on the NPG display does it mention that Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion and baby-parts-trafficking chain. Nowhere does it state that in the city where she first planted her birth control clinics, more black babies are aborted than born alive (1,180 aborted for every 1,000 born alive). Planned Parenthood calls this “reproductive justice”.
Apparently, progressives have a completely different understanding of what justice actually means.
In response to Congressional Republicans’ and STAND’s (coalition of black pastors and Life advocates of varying backgrounds) insistence of the removal of Sanger from the “Struggle for Justice”, the NPG’s responded with this poorly articulated press release: “It was chartered not to be a hall of fame, but to collect and display portraits of individuals who represent the full spectrum of the American experience—the admirable and inspiring personalities, as well as others whose lives were complicated and complex. We are both a history museum and an art museum, requiring that we see the past clearly and objectively.”
Let’s first note that the “full spectrum” NPG touts does not, in any way, include any religious rights. All other “rights” are on full display in the “Struggle for Justice” exhibit, including (of course) “gay rights”, but apparently Americans have never fought for religious rights.
Secondly, Sanger’s life was one rooted in brokenness that promoted further brokenness. Her hatred of those she considered “unfit” wasn’tcomplicated or complex; it was clear and despicable.
Thirdly, the supposed requirement that NPG see clearly and objectivelywould mean Sanger’s bust would be put in a “Struggle for Injustice” exhibit. And her description would be less innocuous than the current misrepresentation which merely states that “during her campaign, Sanger became associated with the eugenics movement—which promoted, among other practices, the forced sterilizations of those deemed mentally unfit and for a time was endorsed by many of the era’s prominent thinkers.”
Nice revisionism Smithsonian. With that logic, wasn’t Hitler just one of the prominent “thinkers” of his time, too? In our country, the nation’s “prominent” thinkers endorsed slavery. Yet, it was denounced by the more principled and humane thinkers who didn’t give excuses or lame justifications for the dehumanization of millions of human beings. Sanger didn’t become “associated” with the eugenics movement; she led it. She wasn’t just a member of the American Eugenics Society; she thrust the racist and elitist pseudoscience into the limelight like none other. She advocated for the forced sterilizations of not just the mentally “unfit”, but of the poor, of those pregnant outside of marriage, of the incarcerated, and of those she deemed “feeble-minded” (which today, quite honestly, would include most of Congress).
The National Portrait Gallery claims they are only honoring her birth control efforts. “Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defective.” These were the words of Margaret Sanger from her book Women and the New Race (Chapter 18).
Why bother with actual history? The Smithsonian obviously isn’t as it proudly sugarcoats a broken woman’s destructive propaganda that wasn’t about the elevation of humanity, but the elimination of it.
Ryan Bomberger is the co-founder and chief creative officer of the Radiance Foundation.
