November 19, 1965

Birth control advocate Hilda Kahlert Cornish died. Cornish founded the Arkansas birth control movement and was instrumental in founding the organization that became Planned Parenthood Association of Arkansas. At Cornish’s initiative, a group of physicians, business and religious leaders, and women active in civic work formed the Arkansas Eugenics Association (AEA). Rabbi Ira Eugene Sanders said, “It was suggested that because the movement might evoke criticism on the part of the rather orthodox and staid community, that we call it the Arkansas Eugenics Association on the grounds that nobody would object to being well born.” In early 1931, AEA opened the Little Rock Birth Control Clinic in the basement of Baptist Hospital. AEA changed its name to the Planned Parenthood Association of Arkansas in 1942.