Martin Luther King and Planned Parenthood
By the time Martin Luther King Jr. had taken his seat in 1960 on Planned Parenthood’s committee on the study of contraception, his views on how artificial birth control could be used to reduce Black family size were well-known throughout the United States. King had been recommended to join the committee by the accomplished and influential Morehouse University sociology professor Walter R. Chivers, who had twice written to his former student (October & November), asking him to become a member. For his part, Chivers had volunteered with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for sixteen years and vouched for the organization’s “integrity, honesty, and complete lack of racial prejudice.”
On November 5, 1960, Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote back to Professor Chivers, saying:
After giving the matter serious consideration, I am happy to say that it will be possible for me to serve on the sponsoring committee of the new study being made by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. I must say that the decision was based on your high recommendation of this agency. Of course, I have always been deeply interested in and sympathetic with the total work of the Planned Parenthood Federation so you may feel free to write Miss Snyder concerning my acceptance (emphasis added).
Of course, King had been “deeply interested in and sympathetic with the total work of the Planned Parenthood Federation,” because, as I will explain below, the use of eugenics to reduce the Black population in America had long been the position of much of the Black elite/Black bourgeoisie class since the early 1900s.
Martin Luther King Jr’s close relationship with the Planned Parenthood Federation and his admiration of the work of the famed eugenicist Margaret Sanger, was put on full display when the organization awarded him, along with Dr. Carl G. Hartman, General William H. Draper, Jr., and President Lyndon Baines Johnson, with their inau
Article from LewRockwell
