Clips

I can’t help but wonder if the fictional Midge Maisel was influenced by the real-life Mary Ware Dennett or what would happen if they met. It’s possible that at least some of Maisel’s pluck and fortitude was derived from learning about women like Dennett in newspapers and magazines. Dennett wasn’t a comedian, she was an activist. From 1915 through the 1930s, Dennett’s pioneering battles against the U.S. government’s censorship helped pave the way for the freedom of speech that Maisel both relies on and fights to expand.

Dennett was a chink in the armor of U.S. obscenity laws, a just-the-facts advocate for honesty in sex education. Unlike Maisel, who grew up in New York, Dennett was a transplant to Manhattan from Boston. That’s where their differences end, and the story of two fearless women pushing the boundaries of legal and cultural norms begins.

The answer is no. In 1873, Anthony Comstock, the anti-smut crusader and head of New York’s Suppression of Vice, succeeded in making all forms of birth control illegal after Congress passed his anti-obscenity statutes. Later known as the Comstock laws, these statutes even prohibited information about the prevention of conception by equating it with pornography. With the stroke of a pen, conversations about how to prevent pregnancy became illegal even between doctors and patients. Anyone found guilty could be fined up to $5,000 and sentenced to prison. Comstock himself once boasted that he’d been responsible for more than 4,000 arrests and the suicides of 15 “deviants.”

Maisel and her friend, Lenny Bruce, may be unaware, but their arrests and battles over censorship are directly related to the laws that Dennett sought to change. By 1915, then 43-year-old Dennett realized that winning the vote for women was only one prong on the path to equality. She quit her job at suffrage headquarters and co-founded the National Birth Control League, the first organization of its kind in the U.S. Its mission was to change the Comstock laws and transform cultural views about sex.

Although the country was beginning to wrestle with its notions about women and morality, the prevailing attitude still held that procreation, or securing the future of the species, was a woman’s supreme duty. The idea that women might regard sex as a creative, pleasurable and emotionally fulfilling act, was beyond their comprehension.

So strong were these social, religious and legal chokeholds on women, that even in the late 1950s, when Maisel reunites with her ex in an evening of passion, or when she falls into the arms of the dreamy doctor, she’s breaking accepted norms.

Fast forward to January 1929 at a federal courthouse in Brooklyn. Now a grandmother and retired from birth control work, Dennett was indicted and arrested for sending obscene material—her sex ed pamphlet—through the mail. The lead counsel of The American Civil Liberties Union, a close friend of Dennett’s, rose to her defense. Declaring her case to be on par with those of Copernicus and Darwin, he marshaled more than 30 experts in academia, religion and medicine to testify that contrary to being smut, Dennett’s book was scientific and educational.

The prosecuting attorney countered that “this woman” and her booklet “…opens the window … and beckons in all the neighbors’ children” to corrupt them. In overly dramatic tones that one reporter called a “caricature” of performance, the prosecutor read passages to the jury that were taken out of context. A Methodist pastor and professor of philosophy at Yale University who was present for the trial, called the prosecutor’s remarks “medieval fatheadism” and “hot air.”

Three years later, Dennett’s attorney was back in court, battling censorship laws, this time on behalf of Random House and its right to publish Joyce’s Ulysses. Citing Dennett’s precedent-setting legal victory, the court ruled in favor of its publication along with other previously banned books in the U.S.

As for Dennett, when the Great Depression settled in, her fame receded into the shadows. At the time of her death in 1947, 23 editions published of The Sex Side of Life and it had been translated into 15 languages. Her family continued to sell it until 1964. I own a stack of yellowed copies of the pamphlet and am struck by its straightforward, common sense approach to sex education—still a rarity today. I can imagine an episode of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel that begins with Maisel dropping a quarter into an envelope and mailing it to Dennett.

Receiving her requested copy, Maisel might respond as she quipped in one episode, “If you have underwear on, you’re overdressed.”

“One of the reasons the Dennett case hasn’t gotten the attention that it deserves is simply because it was an incremental victory, but one that took the crucial first step,” says Laura Weinrib, a constitutional historian and law scholar at Harvard University. “First steps are often overlooked. We tend to look at the culmination and miss the progression that got us there.”

After Dennett’s 14-year-old son approved the booklet, she circulated it among friends who, in turn, shared it with others. Eventually, The Sex Side of Life landed on the desk of editor Victor Robinson, who published it in his Medical Review of Reviewsin 1918. Calling the pamphlet “a splendid contribution,” Robinson added, “We know nothing that equals Mrs. Dennett’s brochure.” Dennett, for her part, received so many requests for copies that she had the booklet reprinted and began selling it for a quarter to anyone who wrote to her asking for one.

These transactions flew in the face of the Comstock Laws, federal and local anti-obscenity legislation that equated birth control with pornography and rendered all devices and information for the prevention of conception illegal. Doctors couldn’t discuss contraception with their patients, nor could parents discuss it with their children.

Dennett soon found that the topic of sex education and contraception was too controversial for elected officials. Her lobbying efforts proved unsuccessful, so in 1921, she again changed tactics. Though the Comstock Laws prohibited the dissemination of obscene materials through the mail, they granted the postmaster general the power to determine what constituted obscenity. Dennett reasoned that if the Post Office lifted its ban on birth control materials, activists would win a partial victory and be able to offer widespread access to information.

Postmaster General William Hays, who had publicly stated that the Post Office should not function as a censorship organization, emerged as a potential ally. But Hays resigned his post in January 1922 without taking action. (Ironically, Hays later established what became known as the Hays Code, a set of self-imposed restrictions on profanity, sex and morality in the motion picture industry.) Dennett had hoped that the incoming postmaster general, Hubert Work, would fulfill his predecessor’s commitments. Instead, one of Work’s first official actions was to order copies of the Comstock Laws prominently displayed in every post office across America. He then declared The Sex Side of Life “unmailable” and “indecent.”

Undaunted, Dennett redoubled her lobbying efforts in Congress and began pushing to have the postal ban on her booklet removed. She wrote to Work, pressing him to identify which section was obscene, but no response ever arrived. Dennett also asked Arthur Hays, chief counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), to challenge the ban in court. In letters preserved at Radcliffe College’s Schlesinger Library, Dennett argued that her booklet provided scientific and factual information. Though sympathetic, Hays declined, believing that the ACLU couldn’t win the case.

Dennett obtained custody of her children, but her abandonment and lack of access to birth control continued to haunt her. Eventually, these experiences led her to conclude that winning the vote was only one step on the path to equality. Women, she believed, deserved more.

In 1928, Dennett again reached out to the ACLU, this time to lawyer Ernst, who agreed to challenge the postal ban on the Sex Side of Life in court. Dennett understood the risks and possible consequences to her reputation and privacy, but she declared herself ready to “take the gamble and be game.” As she knew from press coverage of her separation and divorce, newspaper headlines and stories could be sensational, even salacious. (The story was considered scandalous because Dennett’s husband wanted to leave her to form a commune with another family.)

Dennett cofounded the National Birth Control League, the first organization of its kind in the U.S., in 1915. Three years later, she launched the Voluntary Parenthood League, which lobbied Congress to change federal obscenity laws. Sharon Spaulding / Dennett Family Archive

“Dennett believed that anyone who needed contraception should get it without undue burden or expense, without moralizing or gatekeeping by the medical establishment,” says Stephanie Gorton, author of Citizen Reporters: S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell and the Magazine That Rewrote America. “Though she wasn't fond of publicity, she was willing to endure a federal obscenity trial so the next generation could have accurate sex education—and learn the facts of life without connecting them with shame or disgust.”

In January 1929, before Ernst had finalized his legal strategy, Dennett was indicted by the government. Almost overnight, the trial became national news, buoyed by The Sex Side of Life’s earlier endorsement by medical organizations, parents’ groups, colleges and churches. The case accomplished a significant piece of what Dennett had worked 15 years to achieve: Sex, censorship and reproductive rights were being debated across America.

During the trial, assistant U.S. attorney James E. Wilkinson called the Sex Side of Life “pure and simple smut.” Pointing at Dennett, he warned that she would “lead our children not only into the gutter, but below the gutter and into the sewer.”

None of Dennett’s expert witnesses were allowed to testify. The all-male jury took just 45 minutes to convict. Ernst filed an appeal.

In May, following Dennett’s conviction but prior to the appellate court’s ruling, an investigative reporter for the New York Telegram uncovered the source of the indictment. A postal inspector named C.E. Dunbar had been “ordered” to investigate a complaint about the pamphlet filed by an official with the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Using the pseudonym Mrs. Carl Miles, Dunbar sent a decoy letter to Dennett requesting a copy of the pamphlet. Unsuspecting, Dennett mailed the copy, thereby setting in motion her indictment, arrest and trial. (Writing about the trial later, Dennett noted that the DAR official who allegedly made the complaint was never called as a witness or identified. The activist speculated, “Is she, perhaps, as mythical as Mrs. Miles?”)

Dennett’s is a name that deserves to be known.

When news of the undercover operation broke, Dennett wrote to her family that “support for the case is rolling up till it looks like a mountain range.” Leaders from the academic, religious, social and political sectors formed a national committee to raise money and awareness in support of Dennett; her name became synonymous with free speech and sex education.

Ernst was back in court the following year. Citing U.S. v. Dennett, he won two lawsuits on behalf of British sex educator Marie Stopes and her previously banned books, Married Love and Contraception. Then, in 1933, Ernst expanded on arguments made in the Dennett case to encompass literature and the arts. He challenged the government’s ban on James Joyce’s Ulysses and won, in part because of the precedent set by Dennett’s case. Other important legal victories followed, each successively loosening the legal definition of obscenity. But it was only in 1970 that the Comstock Laws were fully struck down.

Ninety-two years after Dennett’s arrest, titles dealing with sex continue to top the list of the American Library Association’s most frequently challenged books. Sex education hasn’t fared much better. As of September 2021, only 18 states require sex education to be medically accurate, and only 30 states mandate sex education at all. The U.S. has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates of all developed nations.

What might Dennett think or do if she were alive today? Lauren MacIvor Thompson, a historian of early 20th-century women’s rights and public health at Kennesaw State University, takes the long view:

While it’s disheartening that we are fighting the same battles over sex and sex education today, I think that if Dennett were still alive, she’d be fighting with school boards to include medically and scientifically accurate, inclusive, and appropriate information in schools. ... She’d [also] be fighting to ensure fair contraceptive and abortion access, knowing that the three pillars of education, access and necessary medical care all go hand in hand.

At the time of Dennett’s death in 1947, The Sex Side of Life had been translated into 15 languages and printed in 23 editions. Until 1964, the activist’s family continued to mail the pamphlet to anyone who requested a copy.

“As a lodestar in the history of marginalized Americans claiming bodily autonomy and exercising their right to free speech in a cultural moment hostile to both principles,” says Gorton, “Dennett’s is a name that deserves to be known.”

Sharon Spaulding is a historian and researcher who specializes in the life and times of Mary Ware Dennett. The official curator of the Mary Ware Dennett family archives, Spaulding is at work on a book about Dennett’s court trial. She publishes the monthly newsletter “Women Make History: Stories We Should Have Learned in School” at sharonspaulding.com.

Apologies, Marie Kondo, but let’s not all rush to tidy up

There’s an emotional angst and urgency swirling in my soul — and it’s not directly related to COVID-19. It’s a nagging sense of obligation and a question every time I look under my bed or open my basement closets: “To toss or not to toss?”

Until Marie Kondo, the tidying guru, came along, those unorganized piles didn’t tug at my conscience. Maybe I’m just getting older and don’t want to leave my kids a house filled with stuff they don’t want. Or perhaps it’s hard to say goodbye to the memories that are stuffed inside the boxes in my closets. But while I’m all for what Marie calls “sparking joy,” I’ve also learned that, sometimes, procrastination is the better path.

with mostly Ann Taylor-style clothing, simply seeing that shirt each day evokes the smell of my father’s aftershave and warm memories of him wrapping me in his arms.

On a recent evening, two of my three adult children and I cleaned out a chest of drawers in an old house in Alstead, New Hampshire, that has been in my husband’s family for more than 100 years. We’ve spent every summer here since they were babies. As children, they’d run wild and barefoot in its fields of clover, Queen Anne’s Lace and milkweed. Together, we’d rise at 2 a.m. to watch meteor showers streak across the sky like fireflies, and play weeklong games of Scrabble, Canasta and Monopoly.

This same old house had steamer trunks in the attic that taunted me for years, trunks filled with letters, papers and journals dating to 1848. As my husband and I continued the tradition of annual visits, I began to leave my summer reading at home in favor of digging into those trunks. What I discovered was the life story of an extraordinary woman, one who brought about some of the most significant changes in equal rights in the early 20th century, and then was quickly forgotten. Although chances are slim that you’ve heard her name, that woman, Mary Ware Dennett, was recently celebrated by Time magazine as one of nine women in American history that everyone should know.

The attic where Spaulding found Mary Ware Dennett’s journals and papers dating back to 1848. Courtesy photo

Dennett was a reproductive rights advocate, an artist, the second-in-command of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, a pacifist, and an outspoken defender of Black women’s rights. She was a contemporary and bitter rival of Margaret Sanger because Dennett was devoted to making the world better for all, not just a few. Like her relative, Lucretia Coffin Mott, who teamed up with Elizabeth Cady Stanton to launch the women’s movement at Seneca Falls in 1848, Dennett’s aim was nothing less than fulfilling the original promises of the Declaration of Independence.

It was also Dennett who battled the U.S. government in a landmark case over sex education and censorship. Her victory in 1930 soon after enabled publication of previously banned books such as James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” A pacifist, there is even evidence that Dennett co-founded what later became the American Civil Liberties Union.

At the end of her long career, in the 1940s, Dennett offered her extensive files to the library at Harvard. These chronicled women’s suffrage from 1908-1915, the battle for reproductive rights from 1915-1930s, the founding of the Women’s Peace Party and the World Federalist Society prior to World Wars I and II, plus her work on First Amendment issues. Silly girl. Harvard, that all-male bastion of elite education, declined and this precious record of history ended up in my family’s attic.

Eventually, in the late 1980s, my mother-in-law donated most of the papers to the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College, but not Dennett’s private journals, those that chronicle her hopes and fears, her struggles to rise again and again in the face of public ridicule. These papers now form the basis of a book I’m writing about her life.

Had her children rushed to tidy up when she died and tossed the remnants of her life, none of us would know her name, her story. None of us would know on whose shoulders we stand or discover from her just how she managed to juggle the many hats she wore. I’m learning more from Mary Ware Dennett today than I could ever have imagined. It’s why I now sort my piles with less haste.

Find Out More

Sharon Spaulding has spent 10 years researching the life of suffragist and sex-ed activist Mary Ware Dennett. She is working on a book about Dennett’s life, and also publishes a monthly newsletter, “Women Make History: Stories We Should Have Learned in School.”

I also love literary agent Liz Parker’s perspective: “Platform is the number of people who know you. Your network is the number of people you know.”

Sharon wanted a platform that would boost her own writing career while also giving Mary Ware Dennett, the subject of Sharon’s novel-in-progress, her rightful place in American history.

“I’m writing historical fiction that explores Mary’s roles as suffragist, sex education activist and reproductive rights activist,” Sharon says. “Time magazine named Dennett one of the most important women in US history. Her groundbreaking court trial on obscenity charges paved the way for the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses and yet few people have heard of Mary.”

Sharon shared Mary’s story with me during an Ask a Pro session at the 2020 SFWC. Since she’s a marketing pro and Ask a Pro is an opportunity for writers to obtain free advice, I immediately tossed out several DIY publicity ideas that would quickly boost her profile and platform.

“The consultation validated my gut sense that I needed to work with someone else,” says Sharon who traveled from her home in Utah to attend SFWC. “Every conference session I attended was relevant to my process. SFWC more than delivers on its promise.”

Women Make History

After Sharon hired me, I redesigned her website; rebranded her as Sharon Spaulding, feminist historian; edited her pitch and logline; developed social media platforms; edited her book manuscript; and helped her create pitches for essays and articles that have caught the attention of national magazine editors. Sharon was featured in a two-page spread in New Hampshire magazine and has an essay forthcoming in Ms. Magazine, among others. She was also featured on Dr. Buzzkill, a popular podcast for history nerds, in an episode that received more than 1,000 downloads in the first 30 minutes.

Together we designed and launched Sharon’s free monthly newsletter, Women Make History, featuring compact biographies of “women we should have learned about in school.” As expected, the newsletter’s Instagram ads have attracted new subscribers. But nothing has been as exhilarating as the word-of-mouth boosts when delighted subscribers share the newsletter with their circle of friends. Every month after the newsletter goes out, Sharon receives a tsunami of compliments—and more subscribers. Her recent campaign to have Mary Ware Dennett included in the national Women’s History Museum has gained traction as has her new campaign to have Mary’s image on a quarter. Best of all, agents are interested in her manuscript—and so are television producers.

Yes, you read correctly, the Pickle and Pinto Bean pies have made the Sunglow somewhat famous. They were the creation of Cula Ekker, who was once known as the “Pie Queen” of Wayne County.

No one knows the exact origin of Cula’s creations, but, says Brian, they date to the Depression when people simply had to make do with what they had and everything was made from scratch.

Cula’s brother, Milton Taft, says he and his sister were two of six siblings who grew up nearby on a farm. When Cula was just nine years-old, a brother was injured in a riding accident and spent most of a year in a hospital in Salt Lake City. Their mom went with him, leaving Cula to handle the cooking for the family and the farm hands.

“Cula loved to cook,” says Milton. “She was always cooking. She had a job for several years cooking at the local school.”

When Milton built the Sunglow motel in 1965, along with the restaurant, Cula signed on as chef and began serving up her famous Pickle Pie.

“The Lord was with him,” she laughs. “We were both so angry. When I picked up that gun, he knew I meant business and took off running. It was so dark I couldn’t see, so I fired at the sounds he made as he ran. It took a few years before we could laugh about it,” she says, “but eventually we made up.” Today, she has four kids, 15 grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren. Her husband passed away several years ago.

Says Brian, “Every summer we get about 50 tour buses packed with Europeans headed to Escalante. The French love the pies. We hear it over and over again that this is the type of pastry you would find in a different kind of eating establishment.”

The Sunglow Family Restaurant and Hotel at 91 E Main St, Bicknell, UT 435-425-3701

“My parents divorced when I was 5, and my dad never provided any support,” she said. “With my mom running the show, I knew I was headed somewhere, I just didn’t know where.

“My mom’s mantra was education. She used to tell us that the only need we had was getting an education. ‘If you need shoes,’ she would say, ‘it better be that the school requires them. If you don’t need shoes for school, you don’t need them.”

Barker listened to her mom and earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. Her first job after college was with the Salt Lake County Housing Authority.

“When I went to the interview, the woman asked why she should hire me instead of the 60 other candidates who were much more qualified. Because, I told her, I’ve lived it. I watched my mother move us out of poverty, and now I’ve done it.” Barker got the job.

After a few years in that position and later with an educational nonprofit, in 2009, Barker became CEO of CHOICE Humanitarian, an international nonprofit working in rural areas of eight developing countries.

“Every dollar donated to CHOICE is leveraged by a multiplier of five, and the organization is debt-free,” she says. “We practice what we teach.”

Her approach to fundraising is similar to the methodology CHOICE uses in villages.

“The point of our work,” she says, “is for villages to become self-sustaining and self-developing. The same is true for CHOICE as an organization.”

Barker is referring to an innovative approach to fundraising. Traditionally, nonprofits rely on the generosity of individual donors and grants. While CHOICE utilizes this approach, it also engages with corporations in two ways: one, they take company employees into the field to spend a week working alongside villagers on projects that the locals have determined to be critical to their path of self-reliance. Projects might include digging wells, building schools, health clinics, or even cook stoves.

You find it isn’t about us helping them. It is about people helping people. That’s why we run expeditions for college students, families, even singles groups. As my mom used to say, we are all in this together.”

For companies, going on an expedition also creates team bonding across all levels.

What does Barker’s mother think of her daughter’s success?

“She is so proud,” says Barker, “because it’s all about giving back and passing on what I learned from her.”

Besides the importance of an education, what other lessons did Barker learn from her mom that she now passes along to young mothers?

“Be a good role model – your children are learning from you how to become adults.”

“She dumped him a long time ago for the salty haired antiques dealer with the deep set eyes who sells cleavers and other implements.”

“It’s probably just her cover and she’s really a spy. I mean, I didn’t see her last weekend and I made it almost all the way around the entire market. Those linens probably have codes written in invisible ink or computer chips or antique coins sewn into the hems. Coins. Maybe that’s what those boys were searching for in the river.”

“I bet those boys are her kids or maybe even her grandkids. She probably gave them a few coins to stop pestering her and sent them off to the boulangerie to buy bread for dinner. Of course they never made it to the baker and spent the money instead on ice cream...”

“...but not wanting to risk the hand of the butcher, their father, they decided to hunt for treasure among the river rocks so they wouldn’t have to fess up to their crime. But that’s another story.”

“No. I’m certain I saw her once in the pages of a magazine when she was a fashion model and those boots were still in style.”