Lella Secor Florence (July 29 1887 – June 21 1966) was an American journalist, writer, and social activist, best known for her advocacy of birth control and women's reproductive rights in the early 20th century.
Early life and education
- Born Lella Secor in Chatham, New York, she grew up in a Quaker family that emphasized social reform.
- She attended Smith College, where she studied literature and developed an interest in progressive politics.
Career and activism
- After graduating, Secor worked as a reporter for several newspapers, including The New York Evening Post and The Nation, covering labor issues and women's suffrage.
- In the 1910s she became involved with the birth‑control movement, collaborating with Margaret Sanger and helping to establish the Birth Control League, a predecessor of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
- Secor authored a series of articles and pamphlets that promoted contraception as a means of improving public health and women's autonomy. Her 1923 essay “The Promise of Family Planning” was widely reprinted in feminist periodicals.
- During World I, she served as a volunteer nurse with the American Red Cross, later writing about the war’s impact on women’s labor participation.
Personal life
- In 1915, she married British journalist and playwright John Florence, after which she was commonly referred to as Lella Secor Florence. The couple settled in New York City and had three children.
- The Florences were active members of the Heterodoxy Club, a New York‐based feminist salon that hosted leading reformers such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Later years and legacy
- Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Secor continued to write on reproductive health, contributing to The American Journal of Public Health and serving on the advisory board of the Birth Control Federation of America.
- She retired from journalism in the early 1950s but remained a speaker at conferences on family planning and women's rights.
- Lella Secor Florence died in New York City at the age of 78. Her work is recognized for helping to mainstream the discussion of contraception in the United States and for laying groundwork for later reproductive‑rights legislation.
Selected publications
- “The Promise of Family Planning” (1923) – essay in The Woman's Journal
- Birth Control and Social Progress (1931) – collection of articles and speeches
References
- American National Biography, Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Sklar, Kathryn Kish. Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Reform. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
- Sanger, Margaret. My Life as a Woman of the Century, 1955.
Note: The above information is drawn from established biographical sources and historical records.
