On this day, November 14th, 1916

She's had an ugly collaboration with eugenics and racism. It shouldn't be overlooked. She knew better. Others did... she's no one to celebrate after what was done in the last century in the name of race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger
Sanger argued for

A stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.

People who live in the United States are always involved in racism. Many of the Unitarian leaders of her time might be written off as proto Nazis based on their diary entries and too often their public utterances.

Wikepedia does not condemn Sander and the Time write up makes a judgement call on Sanger that puts her on the side of progress for her time "There is still an effort to distort her goal of giving women control over their bodies by attributing such quotes to Sanger as "More children from the fit, less from the unfit - that is the chief issue of birth control." Sanger didn't say those words; in fact, she condemned them as a eugenicist argument for "cradle competition." To her, poor mental development was largely the result of poverty, overpopulation and the lack of attention to children. She correctly foresaw racism as the nation's major challenge, conducted surveys that countered stereotypes regarding the black community and birth control, and established clinics in the rural South with the help of such African-American leaders as W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary McLeod Bethune.

Sanger was a Racist in the real sense of the word. She's a tough one to defend. From Julianne Malveaux: Sanger's Legacy Is Reproductive Freedom and Racism at http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/618

Sanger published the Birth Control Review at the same time that black men, returning from World War I, were lynched in uniform. That she did not see the harm in embracing exclusionary jargon about sterilization and immigration suggests that she was, at best, socially myopic.

That's reason enough to suggest that her leadership was flawed and her legacy crippled by her insensitivity.

I am not using the word racist in an "unreal" sense of the word.

Henry David Thoreau wrote of his people filling up the space all the way to the Westren ocean. That embrace of Manifest Destiny by transcendentalists meant that they supported a movement that resulted in genocide against the people of this land.

Theodore Parker was a racist in that he thought that Black people were inherently less intelligent and emotionally children. Nevertheless, Thoreau and Parker were progressives because of what they stood for overall.

The White Middle Strata in Sangers time worked with ideas that we have since come to see as having problematic consequences, and did it for progressive intent. Sanger did not advocate using her methods to eliminate People of color, even if her ideas were adopted by people who did.

Reproductive choice is a good thing. For, poor people, for People of Color, and for women. She was arrested not for her views (which many scholars disagree with you as to their import) but for her giving out birth control information. Thoreau was arrested for opposing the war against Mexico, not for dream of yeoman farmers creating Concord in Oregon ( a dream that to be realized resulted in soldiers killing whole villages in the night.)

Daniel Berrigan is remembered for his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, not because he was a member of an order that carried out religious persecution during the Reforamtion.

The 20th century Unitarian Presidents (four in a row) who expelled women ministers, and turned away African Americans who sought ministerial fellowship also rebuilt the Unitarian movement in Transylvania, and worked hard to preserve our fragile movement in the face of profound crisis of a changing America, and helped liberal religion regain its footing for the future. We remember Greeley for marching on Selma, not for telling Black people there was no room for them in the AUA. But we need to look at all these "shadows" and ask what they tell us about what we do. If I wanted to be pure, I would go join a traditional tribal community and give up on Unitarian Universalism.

Moral purity, and political correctness in my view isolates the anti racist from engaged work of transformation. People in this country are really involved in racism. Really. That is a historical fact, but not a cause to engage in posturing. Neither of your citations takes that approach, and neither will I.

Racism exists. I can point out the limits of many more progressives, but Sanger is like most progressives, a compromised progressive, who worked closely with anti racists who knew who the real enemy was, saw her as an ally, and wanted to fight those real enemies with willing allies in their time. Dubois, for example, was no fool.