Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis analyzes the relationship between Flanner House, an African
American settlement house, and Planned Parenthood of Central Indiana to determine why
Flanner House director Cleo Blackburn would not allow a birth control clinic to be
established at the Herman G. Morgan Health Center in 1951. Juxtaposing the scholarship
of African Americans and birth control with the historiography of black settlement
houses leads to the conclusion that Blackburn’s refusal to add birth control to the health
center’s services had little to do with the black Indianapolis community’s opinions on
birth control; instead, Flanner House was confined by conservative limitations imposed
on it by white funders and organizations.
The thesis examines the success of Blackburn and Freeman B. Ransom,
Indianapolis’s powerful black leaders, in working within the system of limitations to
establish the Morgan Health Center in 1947. Ransom and Blackburn received monetary
support from the United Fund, the Indianapolis Foundation, and the U.S. Children’s
Bureau, which stationed one of its physicians, Walter H. Maddux, in Indianapolis. The
Center also worked as a part of the Indianapolis City Board of Health’s public health
program. These organizations and individuals did not support birth control at this time
and would greatly influence Blackburn’s decision about providing contraceptives.
In 1951, Planned Parenthood approached Blackburn about adding birth control to
the services at Morgan Health Center. Blackburn refused, citing the Catholic influence on
the Flanner House board. While acknowledging the anti-birth control stance of
Indianapolis Catholics, the thesis focuses on other factors that contributed to Blackburn’s
decision and argues that the position of Flanner House as a black organization funded by
conservative white organizations had more impact than any religious sentiment; birth
control would have been a liability for the Morgan Health Center as adding
contraceptives could have threatened the funding the Center needed in order to serve the
African American community. Finally, the position of Planned Parenthood and Flanner
House as subordinate organizations operating within the limitations of Indianapolis
society are compared and found to be similar.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:IUPUI/oai:scholarworks.iupui.edu:1805/14308 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Brown, Rachel Christine |
| Contributors | Robertson, Nancy Marie, Morgan, Anita, Labode, Modupe |
| Source Sets | Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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