This paper explores African American ideas and concerns about reproductive health in the early twentieth century. African Americans – as parents, physicians, and intellectuals – debated the best ways to bear and raise healthy black children at a time when eugenic campaigns and public health initiatives drew increasing attention to the importance of family planning. At the same time, intensifying racial violence introduced new political stakes in the decision to bear children or terminate a pregnancy, and black women linked concerns about giving birth to threats of racial and sexual violence. Through public forums, including newspaper health columns and magazines, black women discussed whether their reproductive history and experiences during pregnancy could cause a miscarriage, premature birth, or somehow “mark” their child. Their concerns about maternal marking had roots in folklore and science, including Lamarckian theories of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Drawing from sex advice manuals, black historical newspapers, and medical articles, this paper situates these concerns within broader debates about racial fitness, reproduction, and hygiene.
