Timing of Planned Parenthood's 1966 award to MLK suspicious

Timing of Planned Parenthood’s 1966 award to MLK suspicious

The timing of when Planned Parenthood gave civil rights leader Martin Luther King (MLK), Jr. their infamous Margaret Sanger award is suspicious in my view. As America celebrates the life of MLK, Planned Parenthood, which takes lives, will parade MLK around as a trophy. In 1966, Planned Parenthood gave MLK the Margaret Sanger Award and they knew exactly what they were doing when they did so.

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A look at records from Planned Parenthood reveal that for many years, the organization which at the time promoted forced sterilizations of those they deemed unfit, had been discussing how they could win over the “Negro community.” Under a eugenics system, blacks and others deemed to be “Feebleminded or unfit” were sterilized by the state. Research has shown that Planned Parenthood was used by state sterilization boards to perform these surgeries.

A problem arose when the idea of state sponsored sterilization began to be challenged in court. If you put these events on a timeline, as I have, you see clearly that this was the time frame that Planned Parenthood began calling for legalized abortion. The problem they faced was that the Black community saw birth control and abortion as genocide. But, they also had a solution. To use what their founder Margaret Sanger had been successful with for years – they would use Blacks themselves to introduce and promote abortion.

Internal memos within their organization, which I have read and detailed further on my blog, indicate that Planned Parenthood was discussing a solution to this ever growing problem of Blacks being suspicious of them. A snap shot of how this plan to bring the Black community on board is broken down in a small way below.

1962 Planned Parenthood discovers that Black leaders like Malcolm X saw words like “control” as negative and words such as “planning” as positive. Thus the emphasis changed from “birth control” to “family planning.”

1965 Correspondence reiterated to Planned Parenthood leadership that Blacks were suspicious of population control methods. One read in part:

Many Negroes will be justifiably suspicious of white organizations, white physicians, and white social workers that seek to “limit the Negro population.” It smacks of racism and can offend people who are understandably sensitive on the matter.

Then, a solution was expressed to involve the Black leaders from the civil rights movement to introduce their projects, “so that whites are not in the misperceived position of racist aggression.”

1965 The Urban League’s Whitney Young gave a speech before Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate: 89th Congress First Session, where he expressed how Blacks felt about Planned Parenthood. An excerpt of the speech is transcribed below:

Let me conclude by trying to explain why many Negro citizens are suspicious of the motives of family planners…First the administrators of most public institutions are political appointees…the top administrators are well-known racists. Second, since so few of the proponents of family planning, including PPFA are ever prominently identified as fighting the basic problem of discrimination and segregation in employment, in housing, or even in education, either as individuals or through the established agencies like the Urban League, many interpret this interest in family planning as designed more to control population expansion in this particular racial group and to reduce taxes, than to achieve a human and social goal…Third…there still remains , all to often, lack of minority representation at your local policy making levels…

1966 A letter written in February by Sidney A. Hessel of the Planned Parenthood League of New Haven [CT.] to Alan F. Guttmacher, expressed his concern that Blacks viewed the organization as racist:


1966, Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation told a symposium at the University of California Medical Center that a sensitive area in the field of birth control was, “the belief that the white middle class was coercing their own poor and people with black and yellow skins to reduce family size because the middle-class whites are frightened of being outnumbered.

His solution was to involve Black leaders in their movement so they can indoctrinate their “members”



Guttmacher ends by stating that the their suggestions are “long overdue” but stresses, “we do not need to panic. In fact, if we panic and continue to publicize the “problem”, we may well exacerbate it.

NOTE: In 1968, Jaffe founded the PPFA Center for Family Planning Program Development, which later became the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm.

1966 Correspondence between Planned Parenthood leaders continue to confirm that, “civil rights leaders are beginning to take a hostile position toward population planning on the ground that it is an attempt to halt the growth of the Negro population.” To solve the problem, the suggestion is then made that Planned Parenthood immediately open dialogue to the Black leaders, to “get their support and participation.

1966 In May of this year, only months from when Planned Parenthood leaders discussed bringing in some Black civil rights leaders to help them push the Planned Parenthood agenda, Planned Parenthood gave their most infamous award, the Margaret Sanger Award to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was accepted by Mrs. Martin Luther King rather than MLK himself.

It is doubtful that Martin Luther King understood Planned Parenthood’s eugenics past and he certainly had no idea that seven years after he accepted the Margaret Sanger Award, the United States would legalize abortion on demand. He had no way of knowing how Planned Parenthood would grab abortion and use it to target the Black community. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. explains this:

In 1966, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was given the Margaret Sanger Award by Planned Parenthood, abortion was illegal. Today, Planned Parenthood has become the number one provider of abortions in the nation. Research shows that family planning centers and abortion facilities often set up their locations in or near minority communities. Tragically, stats continue to reveal that abortions among minority women are disproportionately high. This is zero indication that this is what MLK intended.

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