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Illinois Federation For Right to Life Daily News |
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Thursday, October 09, 2008 |
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Smithsonian ‘Celebrates’ Planned Parenthood Founder, Anarchist Smithsonian ‘Celebrates’ Eugenicist, Anarchist, Pro-Bolshevik Journalist, and Liberal Feminists
A new, federally funded photography exhibit at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery features 90 women described by the curator as “significant to 20th century America.” They include a eugenicist, an anarchist, a pro-Bolshevik journalist, a number of liberal feminists and a 1960s counter-cultural rock singer, who died of a drug overdose.
Only a few distinctively conservative women are featured in the exhibit.
The exhibit, “Women of our Time: Twentieth-Century Photography,” which opens Friday, Oct. 10, features Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, anarchist Emma Goldman, pro-Communist journalist Louise Bryant, 1960’s counter-culture rock singer Janis Joplin, and actress Judy Garland, among dozens of other women. One of the few conservatives featured is Clare Booth Luce, an influential journalist and author. The collection “celebrates women who have challenged and changed America over the past century,” according to photography curator Ann Shumard.
“We are looking to represent individuals who have had a significant impact on the nation as a whole,” as well as having been “significant figures in their chosen fields,” Shumard told CNSNews.com in a preview of the exhibit.
In the book accompanying the Smithsonian exhibit, “Women of Our Time: 75 Portraits of Remarkable Women,” Sanger is described as being notable for pursuing her goal of helping women “whose health had been devastated by excessive child-bearing” despite being imprisoned and attacked for advocating birth control.
But Sanger, who opened hundreds of birth control clinics across the country, was also well-known for her support of eugenics and abortion.
In an article published in her journal Birth Control Review, entitled “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda,” Sanger said that the uncontrolled breeding of the “unfit” is “the greatest present menace to civilization.”
When CNSNews.com asked whether the exhibit intended to celebrate Sanger’s ideas, Shumard refused to answer.
“I am not a biographer of Margaret Sanger, and cannot speak to those ideas,” she said. “Her inclusion is important because, prior to the movement that she led, information on birth control was not available and it was criminalized in many areas. She made an impact on the 20th century in a significant way. I don’t think you can tell the story of the 20th century without discussing the degree to which family planning impacted women’s entry into the work place.”
Emma Goldman, once described as being “one of the most dangerous extremists in America,” was an anarchist and socialist who often resorted to violence, the exhibition’s background information noted. An advocate of “free love,” Goldman once attempted to assassinate a Carnegie Steel executive.
Bryant – described as “a journalist who left her husband for socialist radical journalist John Reed” -- covered Russia at the time of the Bolshevik coup d’etat – and was regarded as sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, who formed the Soviet Union and were led by communist dictators Vladimir Lenin and later, Joseph Stalin.
Janis Joplin, described as a hard-drinking rock-and-roll singer who overdosed on heroin at age 27, was noted for her music, the gallery curator said.
“She was an extraordinary talent,” Shumard said. “Clearly, she was someone who was a substance abuser, she died of an overdose, her performances were fueled by copious amounts of alcohol, but she had an extraordinary voice, and an extraordinary connection with the public. She was a remarkable woman as a performer, and that’s her contribution. Her music is still considered as emblematic of that era.”
Photos of well-known women, such as Helen Keller, Marilyn Monroe, Katharine Hepburn, Eleanor Roosevelt, Clare Booth Luce, Mahalia Jackson and Amelia Earhart, were included in the collection. Others were celebrated for contributions to their “field” – including feminist activists Kate Millet, Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem; civil rights activists Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer; poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton; authors Margaret Wise Brown, Willa Cather, and Gertrude Stein; artists Georgia O’Keefe and Grandma Moses; fashion editors Helen Gurley Brown and Diana Vreeland; playwrights Lillian Hellman and Wendy Wasserstein and athletes Althea Gibson and Babe Didrikson Zaharias.
Religion was represented by Catholic social activist Dorothy Day and Pentecostal preacher Aimee Semple McPherson.
Contact: Mary Jane O’Brien Source: CNSNews.com Source URL: www.CNSNews.com Publish Date: October 9, 2008 Click here to view this article Click here for more articles like this one.
The IFRL is the largest grassroots pro-life organization in Illinois. A non-profit organization, that serves as the state coordinating body for local pro-life chapters representing thousands of Illinois citizens working to restore respect for all human life in our society. The IFRL is composed of people of different political persuasions, various faiths and diverse economic, social and ethnic backgrounds. Since 1973 the Illinois Federation for Right to Life has been working to end abortion and restore legal protection to those members of the human family who are threatened by abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. Diverse though we are, we hold one common belief - that every human being has an inalienable right to life that is precious and must be protected. IFRL is dedicated to restoring the right to life to the unborn, and protection for the disabled and the elderly. Click here to learn more about the IFRL. |
