Birth Control Pills and Black Children
The Brothers are calling on the Sisters to not take the pill. It is this system's method of exterminating Black
people here and abroad. To take the pill means that we are contributing to our own GENOCIDE.
However, in not taking the pill, we must have a new sense of value. When we produce children, we are aiding
the REVOLUTION in the form of NATION building. Our children must have pride in their history, in their heri-
tage, in their beauty. Our children must not be brainwashed as we were.
PROCREATION is beautiful, especially if we are devoted to the Revolution which means that our value system be
altered to include the Revolution as the responsibility. A good deal of the Supremacist (White) efforts to steri-
lize the world's (Non-whites) out of existence is turning toward the black people of America. New trends in Race
Control have led the architects of GENOCIDE to believe that Sterilization projects aimed at the black man in the
United States can cure American internal troubles.
Under the cover of an alleged campaign to 'alleviate poverty', white supremacist Americans and their dupes are
pushing an all-out drive to put rigid birth control measures into every black home. No such drive exists within
the White American world. In some cities, Peekskill, Harlem, Mississippi and Alabama, welfare boards are
doing their best to force black women receiving aid to submit to Sterilization. This disguised attack on black
future generations is rapidly picking up popularity among determined genocidal engineers. This country is ,i^='
prepared to exterminate people by the pill or by the bomb; therefore, we must draw strength from ourselves.
You see why there is a Family Planning Office in the Black Community of Peekskill
The Sisters Reply
Here is the sisters' reply:
September 11, 1968
Dear Brothers:
Poor black sisters decide for themselves whether to have a baby or not to have a baby.
practise birth control in other ways, it's because of poor black men.
If we take the pills or
Now here's how it i s . Poor black men won't support their families, won't stick by their women -- all they think
about is the street, dope and liquor, women, a piece of ass, and their c a r s . That's all that counts. Poor black
women would be fools to sit up in the house with a whole lot of children and eventually go crazy, sick, heartbroken,
no place to go, no sign of affection -- nothing. Middle class white men have always done this to their women —
only more sophisticated like.
So when whitey put out the pill and poor black sisters spread the word, we saw how simple it was not to be a fool
for men any more (politically we would say men could no longer exploit us sexually or for money and leave the
babies with us to bring up>. That was the first step in our waking up!
Black women have always been told by black men that we were black, ugly, evil, birches and whores - - i n other
words, we were the real ******s in this society -- oppressed by whites, male and female, and the black man, too.
Now a lot of the black brothers are into a new bag. Black women are being asked by militant black brothers not
to practise birth control because it is a form of whitey committing genocide on black people. Well, true enough,
but it takes two to practise genocide and black women are able to decide for themselves, just like poor people
all over the world, whether they will submit to genocide. For us, birth control is freedom to fight genocide of
black women and children.
Like the Vietnamese have decided to fight genocide, the South American poor are beginning to fight back, and
the African poor will fight back, too. Poor black women in the U.S. have to fight back out of our own experience
of oppression. Having too many babies stops us from supporting our children, teaching them the truth or stopping
the brainwashing as you say, and fighting black men who still want to use and exploit us.
But we don't think you are going to understand us because you are a bunch of little middle class people and we
are poor black women. The middle class never understands the poor because they always need to use them as
you want to use poor black women's children to gain power for yourself. You'll run the black community with
your kind of black power -- you on top!
Patricia Haden - welfare recipient
Sue Rudolph - housewife
Joyce Hoyt - domestic
Mt. Vernon, N.Y.
Rita Van Lew - welfare recipient
Catherine Hoyt - grandmother
Patricia Robinson - housewife and psychotherapist