The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger by Margaret Sanger

She joined the Women’s Committee of the New York Socialist party and participated in several labor actions undertaken by the Industrial Workers of the World, including the notable 1912 strike of textile workers at Lawrence, Massachusetts. “Our living-room,” she recalled in her autobiography, “became a gathering place where liberals, anarchists, socialists and IWW’s could meet.” Exposed to modernist notions of political, social, and personal revolution, Sanger discovered the ideological justifications and practical outlets for her rebelliousness and unconventionality. The radical activism and bohemian culture that permeated New York in the prewar years created a formative educational environment for Margaret Sanger. In 1911, however, in an effort to salvage their troubled marriage, the Sangers abandoned the suburbs for a new life in New York City. Though plagued by a recurring tubercular condition, she bore three children and settled down to a quiet life in Westchester, New York.

She was a practical nurse in the women’s ward working toward her registered nursing degree when her 1902 marriage to architect William Sanger ended her formal training.

Determined to escape a similar fate, Margaret Higgins, supported by her two older sisters, attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute before enrolling in White Plains Hospital as a nurse probationer in 1900.

Deeply influenced by her father’s iconoclasm, Margaret, one of eleven children, was also haunted by her mother’s premature death, which she attributed to the rigors of frequent childbirth and poverty. Sanger, Margaret ( 14 September 1879–06 September 1966), birth control advocate, was born Margaret Higgins in Corning, New York, to Michael Hennessey Higgins, an Irish-born free thinker who eked out a meager living as a stonemason, and Anne Purcell Higgins, a hard-working, devoutly Roman Catholic Irish-American. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-105458).

The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger by Margaret Sanger