“Non-white races must be excluded from America … The red and black races if left to themselves revert to a savage or semi-savage stage in a short time.” – Lothrop Stoddard
Margaret Sanger, founder of the American Birth Control League (ABCL), which became Planned Parenthood in 1942, had on her ABCL board a number of controversial directors. Among them was a man named Lothrop Theodore Stoddard, a journalist and author who served on Sanger’s National Council, her ABCL Board of Directors, and the conference committee of the First American Birth Control Conference. He was also published in Sanger’s publication, the Birth Control Review (BCR). Like Sanger, Stoddard was a member of the American Eugenics Society and had connections to the Ku Klux Klan. And, like many within the eugenics movement who helped to found Planned Parenthood, Stoddard had a poor view of minorities and people of color.
Lothrop Stoddard, ABCL/Planned Parenthood Director
Stoddard is featured in a powerful documentary on the history of Planned Parenthood, which Live Action is screening on social media this week. It is called Maafa21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America and was produced by Life Dynamics, Inc., based out of Denton, Texas. The term eugenics, according to the film, was coined by Francis Galton, a cousin to Charles Darwin. Eugenicists like Stoddard and Sanger and others within her leadership believed that it was the superior race’s duty to limit the population of those who were seen by them as inferior. The American eugenics movement primarily set their eyes upon limiting the population of the Black race.
Image: American Eugenics Society document
This can be seen fairly clearly in Stoddard’s book, “The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man,” where he writes in part, “Much more serious is the problem presented by those far more numerous stocks which, while transcending the plane of mere savagery, have stopped at some level of barbarism…. Deceptive veneers of civilization may be acquired, but reversion to congenital barbarism ultimately takes place. To such barbarian stocks belong many of the people of Asia, the American Indians and the African [N]egroes. These congenital barbarians have always been dangerous foes of progress…”
Eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard demeans Blacks in book (Image credit: The Revolt Against Civilization)
Maafa21 quotes Stoddard as saying:
“Non-white races must be excluded from America … The red and black races if left to themselves revert to a savage or semi-savage stage in a short time.”
Lothrop Stoddard quote on non White Races (Image credit: Maafa21)
In the late 1920s, Stoddard was asked this question in a lively radio debate with WEB Dubois: “Shall the Negro be encouraged to seek cultural equality? Has the Negro the same intellectual possibilities as other races?”
His answer, “No!”
Chicago Forum Council. One of the greatest debates ever held, 1929. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
In 1920, Stoddard published his book, “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy,” which contained numerous statements that today would be viewed as racist. The book was introduced by another eugenicist leader by the name of Madison Grant, whose own book, “The Passing of the Great Race,” was said to have been viewed as Adolf Hitler’s “bible” of sorts.
According to author Angela Franks, the text in Stoddard’s book contained such inflammatory statements as the following:
“‘Finally perish!’ That is the exact alternative which confronts the white race…. Just as we isolate the bacterial invasions, and starve out the bacteria, by limiting the area and amount of their food supply, so we can compel an inferior race to remain in its native habitat…”
Lothrop Stoddard wrote racist book The Rising Tide of Color, and sat on Margaret Sanger’s board
It was after “The Rising Tide of Color” was published that Sanger invited Stoddard to join her organization. His book was reviewed by Havelock Ellis, a long-time friend of Sanger’s, in a piece called, “The World’s Racial Problem,” published in the October 1920 edition of Sanger’s Birth Control Review. Although the review was, at times, critical of Stoddard, Ellis wrote in part:
Dr. Stoddard possesses, however, all the temperamental optimism and self-confidence of the white Nordic man whose champion he remains throughout…. Since by the prejudice of color, we must mostly be on his side in this matter, we may profitably meditate on the reasonable considerations he brings forward…. The old checks of the increase of population have largely fallen away, that is why we see today the excessive fertility which threatens to drown the whole world in blood. “The real enemy of the dove of peace,” as Stoddard put it, “is not the eagle of pride or the vulture of greed, but the stork.”
Ellis also wrote, “Looking at the matter, as Dr. Stoddard looks at it, from the white and more especially the Nordic standpoint, which is that of England even more than America, the danger that menaces our position is the immediate future, and our very existence on the more remote future is three fold: the peril of arms, the peril of markets and the peril of immigrants.”
According to Maafa21, Stoddard’s book was widely promoted by the Ku Klux Klan. The film also states that in another book, “The Dragon and the Cross,” Stoddard was identified as the Exalted Cyclops of the Massachusetts chapter of the Klan.
Lothrop Stoddard (a member of Margaret Sanger’s board) – book used by Klan (Image credit: Maafa21)
Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger herself once met with members of the Klan and described that meeting in her autobiography, writing in part, “I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan…. I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses…. I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak…. In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered.”
Margaret Sanger writes about Klan meeting in Autobiography (Image credit: Maafa21)
In 1921, Sanger’s BCR published the review of Stoddard’s “The Revolt Against Civilization,” which, according to reviewer, Juliet Barrett Rublee, Stoddard gave instructions for “race purification.” Rublee, a staunch birth control activist and friend of Sanger’s, described Stoddard’s book as “courageous, and full of fine enthusiasm and vigor of thought and spirit.”
The first step Stoddard recommended to protect the American population was, according to Rublee, “the prevention of all obvious degenerates from having children.” Another step to be taken, according to Stoddard, was “segregation of defectives, appreciation of racial principles, wise marriage selection, Birth Control: these are the main items in the program of race purification.” The BCR review quoted Stoddard as writing the following:
- “We have among us, a rebel army, the vast host of unadaptable, the incapable, the morons, the disconnected, filled with instinctive hatred of civilization and progress and ready on the moment to rise in revolt.”
- “[I]n every civilized country today the superior elements of the population are virtually stationary or actually declining in numbers, while the mediocre elements are rapidly increasing.”
- “[I]ntelligence is today being steadily bred out of the American population.”
- “The mere presence of hoards of low-grade men and women, condemned by their very nature to incompetency and failure, automatically engenders poverty, invited exploitation and drags down others just above them in the social scale. Here is the need for action most apparent.”
Stoddard’s racist ideology was totally in line with the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, according to Dr. Carolyn F. Gerster. Gerster’s research exposing Sanger’s connection to eugenics was published in this 1979 UPI article, where Gerster warned, “There is a… side to Margaret Sanger’s philosophy which must be exposed as it is surfacing in Planned Parenthood’s current policy.”
Margaret Sanger eugenics connection from Carolyn F Gerster (Image: Independent Examiner)
Live Action News has published extensive research on how Sanger made certain that eugenics movers and shakers were deeply embedded in her Planned Parenthood organization.
Below is a sample list of American Eugenics Society founders and members who were a part of Margaret Sanger’s board or organizations — leaders identified in the film, Maafa21. In addition to Sanger’s connections, Live Action News has documented that many of Planned Parenthood’s officials were members or leaders of the American Eugenics Society. (See a partial list here.)
American Eugenics Society members on Margaret Sanger’s Board (Image credit: Maafa21)
In the aforementioned UPI article, Dr. Gerster noted that Stoddard’s views about the racist Nazi eugenics law of sterilization were very positive. She quoted Stoddard as saying, “The sterilization law is weeding out the worst strains of the Germanic stock is a scientific and truly humanitarian way.”
Maafa21 described Stoddard’s visit to Germany to witness a Nazi eugenics court:
On the 19th of December, 1939, during a four-month stay in Germany, Stoddard was given a personal meeting with both Adolf Hitler and the man who would eventually be in charge of the Nazi holocaust, SS leader Heinrich Himmler. Later, when a course on race was introduced at Halle University in Germany, its instructor stated that it would be modeled on the philosophies of American eugenicists including Lothrop Stoddard. Eventually, Stoddard’s racial views would even be featured in Nazi school textbooks.
Lothrop Stoddard, on Margaret Sanger board highlighted in Maafa21
Stoddard detailed his observations in witnessing the Nazi eugenics court, in another book, “Into the Darkness: An Uncensored Report from inside the Third Reich at war”:
The first case I saw looked like an excellent candidate for sterilization. A man in his mid-thirties, he was rather ape-like in appearance–receding forehead, flat nose with flaring nostrils, thick lips, and heavy prognathous jaw. Not vicious-looking, but gross and rather dull. His life-history was mildly anti-social–several convictions for minor thefts and one for a homosexual affair with another boy when a lad. In early manhood he had married a Jewess by whom he had three children, none of whom had showed up too well. That marriage had been dissolved under the Nuremberg Laws. He was now seeking to marry a woman who had already been sterilized as a moron. The law forbids a non-sterilized individual to marry a sterilized person; so he was more than willing to be also sterilized. The lower court recommended sterilization…
Lothrop Stoddard views Nazi eugenics court (Image credit: Maafa21)
Case Four was a seventeen-year-old girl. The issue was feeble-mindedness. She certainly looked feebleminded as she sat below the bench, hunched in a chair, with dull features and lackluster eyes. Left an orphan at an early age, she had had a haphazard upbringing. The record showed her to have been always shy, backward, and unable to keep up with normal schooling…
I came away convinced that the law was being administered with strict regard for its provisions and that, if anything, judgments were almost too conservative. On the evidence of that one visit, at least, the Sterilization Law is weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a scientific and truly humanitarian way.
The tragedy of eugenics, of which Sanger and Stoddard were a part, is that it may have influenced Hitler’s Nazi Holocaust, which targeted not only Jews, but the Afro-German community as well as the disabled, and beyond.
Today, in many ways, abortion is doing the exact same thing.
In fact, the same eugenics ideology that laid the groundwork for the Planned Parenthood organization is alive and well in pro-abortion philosophy. Maafa21 presents a compelling case for this connection. The film shows without exception that eugenics, abortion and Planned Parenthood are tied together. So, why do so many remain in denial?
Perhaps the answer to that is seen in the final words of one of the film’s narrators:
You know, when you study the Nazi holocaust, you can see these films of Jews running into ditches to be shot in the head. You can even see films of them actually walking into the gas chambers. And it is tempting to ask yourself why they didn’t fight back. I mean, if you’re going to be killed anyway, what have you got to lose?
Maafa21 host talks about abortion
Perhaps the answer is that they simply could not believe it was really happening. Maybe the normal human mind is just not wired to accept that your fellow man is capable of such senseless brutality on such a scale – even when you see it happening with your own eyes.
As African-Americans, we need to recognize that we are doing the same thing. We need to understand that terms like “pro-choice” and “reproductive rights” and “family planning” are nothing more than marketing slogans. They are just code words that organizations like Planned Parenthood use to hide the fact that we are voluntarily submitting to the will of those who have been trying to exterminate us….
Live Action will be screening Maafa21 live on its social media pages and will be sharing clips of the film throughout the rest of February.
If you would like to order a copy of Maafa21, please visit www.maafa21.com.
