The Pill
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History May 5 - 11.
American philanthropy is a powerful tool in our society, covering gaps that businesses and the government cannot. Charitable giving impacts various areas, such as food insecurity, homelessness, and healthcare.
It’s been this way throughout our history. A lot of money was also poured into movements, such as Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and, in the late 1950s, sexual reproduction rights.
Buckle up because here is a very mediocre history lesson of how the United States got into the Sexual Revolution, which is really the second sexual revolution.
The first sexual revolution began in the late 1800s when society rejected the formal constraints on sexual activities. There was more discussion around the purpose of sex, its outcomes, and what it meant to women, and their place in the ever-developing American way of life.
By the 1940s, people like Alfred Kinsey founded places like the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, and more and more money was being given to expand and discover new ways of interacting with the concept of sex.
While all of this was happening, Margaret Sanger was working as a nurse in New York City, serving women who were dealing with complications of giving birth. Sanger, whose mother died at 50, having conceived 18 times and delivered 11 babies, was determined to give women more agency in their reproductive choices. She wrote pamphlets, gave speeches, and coined the term “birth Control.” Sanger founded Planned Parenthood in 1916, with the idea of helping women with pregnancies and keeping them out of back alleys to have abortions.
During the 1950s, American philanthropist Katherine McCormick bankrolled Dr. Gregory Pincus's research on an oral contraceptive called Enovid. McCormick graduated from MIT and, instead of attending medical school, married a McCormick man, whose family created a fancy harvesting machine that made them filthy rich.
She used her financial research and Sanger's growing organizing to create a semantic shift in women’s body autonomy. On May 9, 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it had approved Enovid, the first contraceptive pill now available to the public.
The second sexual revolution began, and it is still being battled today, where states like Florida put pressure on school districts to limit the discussion on contraceptives because that’s a great idea that doesn’t help.
Okay, let's highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events celebrate their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here's what I got:
1. John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwinism on May 5, 1925. The state of Tennessee passed the Butler Act in 1925 to prevent public school teachers from denying the Creation story in the Book of Genesis, which states that God created the earth in 144 hours because God keeps time. This wasn’t an actual case, because Scopes couldn’t recall ever teaching evolution in class, but was eager to assist in trying the case. Three-time failed presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan worked for the prosecution. Not used to winning, Bryan would die five days after the jury convicted Scopes and fined him $100 for defying the Lord.
2. John Brown was born on May 9, 1800. The abolitionist and instrument of God was delivered at the perfect moment in American history. Brown would send many enslavers to meet their maker over the decades before future traitors to the United States, like Robert E. Lee, captured him at Harper's Ferry fifty-nine years later. May 9 should be a national holiday.
3. Ethan Allen captured Fort Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775. The Delaware-based furniture store company took the name of this Revolutionary War hero from Vermont, who, along with the Green Mountain Boys, took a hard-to-pronounce military fort on the south end of Lake Champlain. Allen, alongside Colonel Benedict Arnold, used the captured fort as a staging point for the failed land invasion of Quebec.
In 1975, country singer Loretta Lynn wrote and performed a song called “The Pill.” Still highly controversial 15 years after its approval, the song reflected Lynn’s life of multiple pregnancies and children, and how a woman now with the pill could be more in control of the outcomes from having sex.
The Pill Video
Well, if you read this on Monday morning, I bet you feel this is a great way to begin your week! I do hope it’s a good one. Please feel free to hit the like button if you liked it.
I’ll see you on Friday with another scandal. I’m also working on a few other essays concerning some of the other editions we created and discussed at the beginning of the year.
See you soon!
Okay,
Chris
