June 1932 Edition: XVI, No 6
Birth Control Review
A Negro Number
The American Negro has been going through a period of stress, not only in the present depression, but long before it. His income is reduced by ignorance and prejudice and his former tradition of marriage and large families have put grave strain on a budget on which he was seeking, not merely to maintain, but to improve his standard of living.
As slaves, every incentive was furnished to raise the largest number of children possible. The chief surplus crop of Virginia and other border states consisted of this natural increase of slaves and it was realized in the consequent slave trade to feed the lower South and Southwest. Frederick Bancroft has recently shown us that this trade, in the decade 1850-60, involved average annual sales of nearly 80,000 human beings, representing $100,000,000 dollars of capital.
Even then birth control was exercised by the more intelligent slaves, as we know from many reminiscences.
After em…