Rural Extension Work of the Kentucky Birth Control League, 1933–1942
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“Completely Sold on Birth Control”: Rural Extension Work of the Kentucky Birth Control League, 1933–1942 By Courtney Kisat In August 1939, after years of seeking birth control for her rural patients, community health nurse Lutrella Baker from the Line Fork Settlement in southeastern Kentucky wrote to Jean Tachau, president of the Kentucky Birth Control League (KBCL) in Louisville. “At last I have some grand news to report,” she exclaimed, “There is a new doctor at Pine Mountain Settlement School . [and] he is completely sold on birth control, especially as he sees conditions here.”1 Tachau and Baker went on to organize supplies for the clinic at Line Fork, a successful outcome of rural extension work from the KBCL. The birth control movement grew throughout the 1930s, and state affiliates of the American Birth Control League (ABCL) operated clinics that served thousands of women.2 The KBCL was the fifteenth state affiliate of the ABCL and like other state leagues, they success- fully established birth control clinics in urban areas such as Louisville and Lexington. But unlike other states, the Kentucky State Board of Health did not support birth control as a public health initiative, so county clinics offered no form of contraception. The KBCL filled that void with state extension work in rural counties. The initiative 1 Lutrella Baker to Jean Tachau, August 16, 1939, Box 1, Folder 12, Family Planning in Kentucky Collection, Kentucky Historical Society Collections, Frankfort, Ky., (hereinafter Family Planning in Kentucky Collection, KHS). 2 On the extent of the ABCL work with state leagues, see Catherine Moran Hajo, Birth Control on Main Street: Organizing Clinics in the United States, 1916–1939 (Urbana, Ill., 2010). COURTNEY KISAT is an assistant professor of history and program coordinator of the Secondary Social Studies Education at Southeast Missouri State University. REGISTER OF THE KENTUCKY HISTORICAL SOCIETY 303 VOL. 116, NOS. 3&4 (SUMMER/AUTUMN 2018) REGISTER OF THE KENTUCKY HISTORICAL SOCIETY came from Tachau, an experienced social worker who drew from her networking skills and experience to build collaborative committees in rural communities. Rural Kentucky women who received birth control access in the late 1930s and early 1940s benefitted from this collaboration. Central to the state extension work of KBCL was the creation of community committees, which included ministers, teach- ers, librarians, nurses, and women’s church groups. The KBCL was willing to recruit any person interested in establishing birth control services for the women of their county.3 Participants included a first- grade teacher in Edmonton, a USDA Home Demonstration Agent in Franklin, and a county health nurse in Daviess County, all of whom wrote the KBCL for information.4 Successful extension work was especially evident in Bell and Breathitt Counties, where the KBCL helped create community committees; in Madison County, where their efforts contributed to a strong local birth control initiative; and in Letcher County, site of the Line Fork Settlement. This study is a contribution to the growing literature of state-level birth control initiatives in the interwar period.5 It shows that despite the lack of support from the state, the KBCL impacted rural women in places where they were able to draw from social work methods to collaborate with people in those communities. Between 1880 and 1930, progressive women’s groups drove social, political, and economic changes in the Commonwealth. This included such initiatives as the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, founded by women in 1888, and the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs in 3 Jean Tachau to Fairy Farley, November 1, 1936, Box 1, Folder 3, Family Planning in Kentucky Collection, KHS. 4 Summary County Folders, 1939–1944, Box 1, Folder 1, Family Planning in Kentucky Collection, KHS. 5 The history of reproductive politics has recently seen more contributions on state and local experiences in a departure from top-down studies of leaders of the movement. For examples of localized studies, see Tanya Hart, Health in the City: Race, Poverty, and the Negotiation of Women’s Health in New York City, 1915–1930 (New York, 2015); Rose Holz, “Nurse Gordon on the Trail: Those Early Days of the Birth Control Clinic Movement Reconsidered,” Women’s and Gender Studies Program Digital Commons, 2005, available online at https://digitalcommons. unl.edu/womenstudiespapers/3/ (accessed May 9, 2018); and Harold L. Smith, “‘All Good Things Start With the Women’: The Origin of the Texas Birth Control Movement, 1933–1945,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 114 (Jan. 2011): 252–85. 304 COMPLETELY SOLD ON BIRTH CONTROL Map of KBCL extension work. Counties in light gray represent places where birth control clinics were established. Those in dark gray represent places in correspondence with KBCL. Map by author, all rights reserved. 1894. Women’s clubs helped create the first county health department in Mason County in 1914, and by the late 1920s, health departments in every county of Kentucky. When Congress passed the Sheppard– Towner Act in 1922 to provide funding for health programs to benefit women and children, Kentucky legislators responded to women’s advocacy and approved a measure to create a Bureau of Maternal and Child Health. The birth control movement in Kentucky was not the first reform driven by women, but rather a link in a long chain of maternalist policies in state reforms.6 From their first meeting in 1933, the KBCL worked to “help mothers have healthier babies, check the practice of induced abortions, and establish clinics in all sections of the state.”7 They gained public support by promoting birth control 6 On the tradition of progressive reforms initiated by Kentucky women, see Dana M. Caldemeyer, “Yoked to Tradition: Kentucky Women and Their Histories, 1900–1945,”Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (hereinafter RKHS) 113 (Spring/Summer 2015): 453–75. 7 These goals were stated in a promotional pamphlet, “The Kentucky Birth Control League,” October 1, 1937–September 30, 1938, Box 1, Folder 11, Family Planning in Kentucky Collection, KHS. On Jean Tachau and the KBCL, see Judith Gay Meyers, “A Socio-Historical Analysis of the Kentucky Birth Control Movement 1933–1943,” (PhD dissertation, University of Kentucky, 2005); and Elizabeth Caskey, “Making Birth Control Acceptable: The Development of the Twentieth Century Birth Control Movement,” (MA thesis, University of Louisville, 2005). 305 REGISTER OF THE KENTUCKY HISTORICAL SOCIETY to improve maternal and child health and as an economic measure for poor families. The KBCL was especially visible throughout the state, first in the cities of Louisville and Lexington, and gradually in over forty rural eastern Kentucky counties. Early professional social work methods were fundamental to women’s movements in the interwar period. Social workers had driven a professionalization movement that placed them in the emergency relief efforts of the New Deal. Developments in social work reflected growing knowledge of the importance of local invest- ment to a successful outreach project in rural areas and this was the case in the state extension work of the KBCL.8 Since 1917, KBCL president Jean Tachau had served in various social work capacities. She volunteered through the Red Cross Home Service and the Chil- dren’s Protective Association, served as chair of the Council of Social Agencies in Louisville, became president of the Children’s Agency in Louisville, and served on the boards of the Louisville and Jefferson County Children’s Home throughout the 1930s.9 Later, she recalled how her social work experience led to birth control advocacy. “We were involved in all kinds of family problems and in really the very lowest economic levels,” she said. “We saw the results of poverty and overpopulation. We saw the crowded conditions. We saw what it did to the children and their families.”10 Tachau’s social work training and instincts created a successful clinic-based movement in urban centers and led her to seek opportunities for collaboration to bring birth control to rural women. The KBCL did not stand apart from other state birth control leagues in their early work. In the summer of 1933, the KBCL estab- lished the first birth control clinic in the state at the Norton Memorial Infirmary in Louisville. Known thereafter as the “Norton Clinic,” it 8 Joan Marie Johnson, Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women’s Movement, 1870–1967 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2017), 170. 9 Jean Brandeis Tachau, “An Interview of Mrs. Charles G. Tachau, Her Early Work with Planned Parenthood and Child Welfare in Louisville and Kentucky,” interview by Anne Dent on November 26, 1974, in Louisville, Kentucky, Nunn Oral History Center, University of Kentucky (hereinafter Nunn Center UK), 5. 10 Ibid., 8. 306 COMPLETELY SOLD ON BIRTH CONTROL operated under the direction of the hospital and only accepted patients with written referrals from a physician or social service agency. The Medical Council of the Norton Medical Infirmary emphasized that the clinic was to be operated “without additional cost to the Hospital and is in every way to conform to such rules and regulations as set forth by the Hospital,” a policy which excluded women of color.11 It did, however, reach hundreds of women in the Louisville area; by June 1935, 130 women were given “contraceptive advice” there.12 Throughout 1935 and 1936, the KBCL raised funds and established clinics in order to expand birth control access to more women. The Maternal Health Clinic at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Lexington opened in 1935, where licensed physicians provided birth control services to both African American and white women on alternating days. In 1936, the Adler Mothers Clinic opened in the parish house of the Church of Our Merciful Savior in Louisville to serve African American women.13 In 1937, the KBCL opened the Floyd Street Clinic in Louisville, accepting patients who applied directly rather than through referral.