title: Alex Morgan

text: On September 12, 2020, Morgan signed with English FA Women's Super League team Tottenham Hotspur. The contract reportedly ran from September through December 2020, with an option to extend the deal through the end of the 2020–21 FA WSL season in May 2021. Orlando retained Morgan's NWSL rights. Still trying to regain fitness having not played since August 2019 and giving birth in May 2020, Morgan eventually made her Spurs debut on November 7, 2020, appearing as a 69th-minute substitute in a 1–1 WSL draw against Reading. On November 14 she made her first start for Spurs, playing 45 minutes in a 2–2 draw with Bristol City before being substituted at half-time. In her third appearance Morgan played against North London rivals Arsenal in the League Cup group stage, substituting on at half-time. The match finished in a 2–2 tie and a penalty shootout with Morgan the only player to not convert, instead firing the decisive penalty over the crossbar in a 5–4 defeat. She scored her first goal for the club on December 6, 2020, an 84th-minute penalty in a 3–1 victory over Brighton & Hove Albion, Spurs' first league win of the season. The following week, Morgan scored her second penalty in as many games as Spurs beat Aston Villa 3–1. On December 21, Tottenham Hotspur announced that Morgan would end her contract with the club and return to the US.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan returned to Orlando Pride ahead of the 2021 season. Having missed the start of the 2021 NWSL Challenge Cup while on international duty to play in friendlies against Sweden and France, Morgan made her first appearance for Orlando since August 2019 on April 21, 2021, in a 1–0 Challenge Cup win over Washington Spirit, a total of 609 days. She registered an assist on the only goal of the game, scored by Sydney Leroux. Morgan scored in each of the first four games of the regular season as Orlando went unbeaten and finished May at the top of the table. It was the first time a player had scored in each of the first four games of a season in league history. She was named NWSL Player of the Month for only the second time in her career in May 2021.


title: Alex Morgan

text: On December 13, 2021, San Diego Wave FC announced the signing of Morgan. The terms of the trade were revealed three days later following the opening of the trade window with Orlando receiving a record $275,000 in Allocation Money and Angharad James in return.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Due to the ACL injury that slowed her progress in 2007, Morgan was not called up to train with the United States under-20 women's national soccer team until April 2008. Her first appearance for the under-20 team occurred during the 2008 CONCACAF Women's U-20 Championship in Puebla, Mexico, where she scored her first international goal against Cuba.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan was named to the United States U-20 women's national team that competed in the 2008 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup in Chile, scoring a total of four goals in the tournament against France, Argentina and North Korea. Morgan's fourth goal was a match-winner that won the U.S. the tournament, which was subsequently voted the best goal of the tournament, and later FIFA's second-best goal of the year. Her performance on the field earned her the Bronze Shoe as the tournament's third-highest scorer and the Silver Ball as the tournament's second-best player behind teammate Sydney Leroux.


title: Alex Morgan

text: She has been capped by the senior national team, first appearing as a substitute in a match versus Mexico in March 2010, and scored her first international goal after coming on as a substitute against China, which salvaged a 1–1 draw in October 2010. Her most important goal to date came a month later in a crucial road match against Italy. After entering the match in the 86th minute, she scored in the fourth minute of added time to give the United States a 1–0 victory over Italy in the first leg of a playoff to qualify for the final spot for the Women's World Cup.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan was the youngest player on the U.S. national team that placed second in the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup. On July 13, 2011, she scored her first FIFA Women's World Cup goal in the 82nd minute of the semi-final matchup against France, giving the USA a 3–1 lead and ultimately, the victory. She scored the first goal (69') in the FIFA World Cup Final against Japan after coming on as a substitute at the half, as well as assisting on the Abby Wambach header (104') for a goal in extra time. Her performance made her the first player to ever record a goal and an assist in a World Cup final. Morgan finished eighth in the balloting for the 2011 FIFA World Player of the Year.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan did not become a starter for the U.S. until the fifth match of the year in January, the final of the CONCACAF Olympic qualifying tournament. She scored twice and provided two assists to Wambach that day, in a 4–0 win over the Canadian hosts and has become a regular starter ever since. Between January and late May 2012, Morgan scored 14 goals in a 12-match stretch including a sequence of three straight two-goal efforts on January 29, February 11 and 29. She earned her first career hat-trick on March 7, 2012, during a 4–0 victory against Sweden in the third-place match of the Algarve Cup. In June 2012, she was nominated for an ESPY Award as the Best Breakthrough Athlete.


title: Alex Morgan

text: In the opening match of 2012 London Olympics group play, Morgan scored both the equalizer and the goal that sealed the win against France. In the next three Olympic matches, she assisted on the match-winning goal, including two to Wambach.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan scored the winning goal in the Olympic semi-final match against Canada in extra time, sending the United States to the gold medal match against Japan. Her goal came in the 123rd minute, the latest goal ever scored by a member of the U.S. women's team and a FIFA record. The goal continued her propensity for late heroics in the closing stages of matches. Seventeen of her 28 total goals to date have come after the 60th minute. The match-winning goal was Morgan's team-high 20th in 2012, becoming only the sixth and youngest U.S. player to do so in a single year. In the final, a 2–1 win against Japan on August 9, Morgan assisted on a Carli Lloyd header. She ended the tournament with three goals, and a team-high four assists (tied with Megan Rapinoe) and ten points (tied with Rapinoe and Wambach).


title: Alex Morgan

text: To celebrate her achievements, she was honored at her former high school and the No. 13 jersey was retired.


title: Alex Morgan

text: In 2012, Morgan led the U.S. in goals (28), multi-goal matches (9), assists (21) and points (77). Her calendar year goals, assists and points totals are the third-best, tied second-best (one tally shy of record), and second-best, respectively, in USWNT history. Morgan joined an exclusive club as she and Hamm are the only USWNT players to record at least 20 goals and 20 assists in the same calendar year and became only the third and youngest player to reach 20 assists in a calendar year. Morgan and Wambach combined for 55 goals in 2012 – matching a 21-year-old record set in 1991 by Michelle Akers (39 goals) and Carin Jennings (16 goals) as the most goals scored by any duo in USWNT history. She had either scored or assisted on 41 percent of the USA's 120 goals this year. And, by herself, she comfortably out-scored and out-assisted her opponents, who combined for 21 goals and 12 assists in 32 matches against the U.S.


title: Alex Morgan

text: For her excellence on the field, U.S. Soccer announced Morgan as the 2012 Female Athlete of the Year. Morgan's exploits have also earned her a place on the FIFA Ballon d'Or shortlist, ultimately finished third in voting.


title: Alex Morgan

text: At the 2013 Algarve Cup, Morgan shared top-scoring honors. She finished the competition with four assists and three goals, including the equalizer against Sweden that advanced the U.S. to the final and the two goals against Germany that won the championship. She previously won the tournament's golden boot in 2011. On June 2, 2013, Morgan scored two-second-half goals as the U.S. defeated Canada 3–0 in front of a sold-out crowd in Toronto. This was the first match between USA and Canada since the epic semi-final of the 2012 Olympic Games. Morgan was named to her third appearance on the 10-player short list for FIFA Women's World Player of the Year in 2013 and finished fourth in the voting. For the inaugural CONCACAF Awards, she was recognized as the CONCACAF 2013 Female Player of the Year. And as a part of U.S. Soccer's celebration of its Centennial anniversary the Federation revealed the US Soccer's All-Time Women's National Team Best XI, she was youngest player selected at 24 years old.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan had a return of five goals in seven matches for the USWNT in 2014 after returning from injury before she reinjured her ankle at the 2014 CONCACAF Women's Championship, which ruled her out for the rest of tournament.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan scored in a 1–0 friendly win over England in February upon her return to the international fold. She was part of the USWNT that won its tenth Algarve Cup in 2015. She scored in the 3–0 defeat of Switzerland.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan spent two months recovering from a knee injury in the build-up to the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. Morgan's knee injury happened in April during the NWSL season against the Boston Breakers. She made her first start at the World Cup Finals as the U.S. defeated Nigeria 1–0 in the last group match to advance as group winners. She registered her only goal of the World Cup's knockout stage with the opener in the 2–0 last 16 win over Colombia. Morgan did, however, win penalties for the USWNT in the 2–0 victories against Colombia in the last 16 and Germany in the semi-finals, respectively. She then started the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup Final as the USWNT defeated Japan 5–2 to win its third FIFA Women's World Cup. Morgan played in all seven World Cup Finals matches and started in every one of them since being restored to the starting XI against Nigeria.


title: Alex Morgan

text: At the first SheBelieves Cup competition in March 2016, an invitational four-team tournament consisted of England, France, Germany and the United States, Morgan was awarded the Golden Boot and the MVP award. She scored in victories against France and Germany as the USWNT won the tournament with three wins from three. Morgan scored eight goals during her first nine appearances of 2016.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan marked her 100th cap for the USWNT in a 5–0 friendly win against Republic of Ireland on January 23, by registering a goal and an assist. At the CONCACAF Olympic Qualifiers in February, Morgan scored the fastest recorded goal in tournament history and in the history of the USWNT, netting after just 12 seconds, before later adding a second, in a 5–0 defeat of Costa Rica. She followed this up with her third career hat-trick in a win against Trinidad and Tobago, as the USWNT secured their qualification for the Rio Olympics. Morgan started in the qualification final against Canada, as the USWNT won 2–0 to be crowned tournament winners. She was voted in the Best XI for the tournament.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan was named to the United States' 18-player roster for the Rio Olympics on July 12, 2016. She started and scored a goal in the team's opening match vs New Zealand on August 3. The United States was knocked out of the tournament in the quarter-final round via a penalty shootout loss to Sweden. Morgan scored the equalizer in regulation time to draw the match level, but missed her penalty in the ensuing shootout. Morgan ended her 2016 national team goal scoring campaign with a brace of goals in the team's 8–1 victory over Romania on November 10.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan made three appearances at the 2017 SheBelieves Cup, including a start vs England on March 4. On May 26, she was named to the team's roster for two abroad June friendlies vs Sweden and Norway, but withdrew in the coming days after suffering a hamstring injury. Morgan was then included in the United States 23-player roster for the 2017 Tournament of Nations, where she scored one goal in a match vs Japan on August 3. She ended the year strong, leading the team in goals scored with seven.


title: Alex Morgan

text: In 2018, Morgan won US Soccer's Female Player of the Year award. She was nominated alongside Julie Ertz, Tobin Heath, Lindsey Horan and Megan Rapinoe. She tallied 18 goals total in 19 appearances for the United States in 2018. This included her fourth career hat-trick vs Japan at the 2018 Tournament of Nations and her seven goals at the 2018 CONCACAF Women's Championship, where she won golden boot as the tournaments top scorer. She helped the team qualify for the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in the semifinal of that tournament scoring twice in a 6–0 win vs Jamaica on October 14. Morgan then won the CONCACAF Women's Championship for the second time in her career after helping her team defeat Canada 2–0 in the final on October 17, where she contributed one goal.


title: Alex Morgan

text: In the lead up to the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup, Morgan scored her 100th career international goal in a friendly vs Australia on April 4, 2019. As a leader of the USWNT at the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup, Morgan scored five goals in the opening group game against Thailand to equal the World Cup single-game goals record set by Michelle Akers in 1991. Morgan also registered three assists in the game. The team's 13–0 scoreline set a new record for margin of victory in a World Cup match. On July 2, 2019, Morgan became the first woman to score a world cup goal on her birthday, in a 2–1 win over England to reach the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup Final. In the final on July 7, Morgan helped win a penalty that was later converted by Megan Rapinoe to open the scoring, as the United States defeated the Netherlands 2–0. Morgan was awarded the tournament's Silver Boot; finishing as the joint-top scorer with six goals but losing out to Megan Rapinoe on a fewest minutes tiebreaker. She was named to the bench in the opening friendly of the Victory Tour against Ireland but was unused before being ruled out for the rest with a season-ending ankle injury.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan missed the 2020 CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying Championship and 2020 SheBelieves Cup due to pregnancy. With club and international soccer severely disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic, Morgan made her national team comeback and first appearance under new head coach Vlatko Andonovski on November 27, 2020, in a friendly against the Netherlands, 509 days since her last appearance against the same opposition in the 2019 World Cup final. In February 2021, she was named to the 2021 SheBelieves Cup roster. In June 2021, Morgan was named in the 18-player United States Women's soccer team roster for the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. She appeared in all six matches for the United States in the tournament, which saw the team take home the bronze medal on August 5 following their 4–3 victory over Australia. Morgan scored in the team's 6–1 group stage win over New Zealand on July 24, and converted a penalty kick in the team's quarter-final shootout win over the Netherlands on July 30. On September 21, 2021, Morgan scored her sixth career international hat-trick for the United States in a friendly against Paraguay in Cincinnati.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Ahead of two abroad friendlies vs Australia in November 2021, USWNT head coach Vlatko Andonovski opted to leave a core group of veteran players off of his 22-player roster, which included Morgan. He cited that he needed to give roster spots to younger players to award them valuable minutes ahead of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup. As a result of this decision, Morgan subsequently was not included in the 23-player roster for the 2022 SheBelieves Cup in February. On June 13, 2022 Morgan was recalled to the national team ahead of two friendlies vs Colombia and the 2022 CONCACAF W Championship. Morgan helped the team win their third consecutive CONCACAF title and directly qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics, scoring the game winner on a penalty kick in a 1–0 victory over Canada in the final. She also helped the United States clinch qualification for the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup scoring twice in the team's opening match against Haiti on July 4, and being in the squad for the team's 5–0 win over Jamaica on July 7. She was named to the tournament's best XI and was awarded golden ball as the tournament's best player. Morgan was also the joint top scorer of the tournament having scored three goals; tied with Julia Grosso, Jessie Fleming, and Kadija Shaw.


title: Alex Morgan

text: In 2012, Morgan signed with Simon & Schuster to pen "The Kicks", a four-book series for middle schoolers. The series is focused on four young girls and features themes of friendship, leadership, and soccer. In a statement released by the publisher, Morgan said she wanted her books to "inspire young girls" and "celebrate" her love of soccer. The first novel, "Saving The Team", was released on May 14, 2013, followed by the second novel, "Sabotage Season", on September 3, 2013. "Saving the Team" debuted at number seven on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for Children's Middle Grade. In 2015, a live-action kids comedy series based on the books, called "The Kicks", began airing on Amazon Prime.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan has signed several endorsement deals with businesses including Nike, Panasonic, AT&T, Chobani, McDonald's, P&G, Mondelez International, and Coca-Cola. "Time" named Morgan the highest paid American women's soccer player in June 2015 attributed mostly to her endorsement deals. In July 2011, she signed a one-year endorsement deal with Bank of America. In January 2012, Morgan and national teammate Heather Mitts became brand ambassadors for health product company, GNC. The same year, she made appearances on behalf of Ubisoft promoting the launch of their video game, "Just Dance 4". In 2013, she appeared in television commercials for Bridgestone. She joined a two-year partnership as the spokesperson for ChapStick in October 2013. In 2015, she starred in a Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company commercial that was broadcast nationwide in the United States. She appeared in commercials for Chobani in 2016. In July 2018, Morgan joined the team of ambassadors at Molecule, an athlete recovery mattress and bedding company.


title: Alex Morgan

text: In 2016, Morgan joined UNICEF Kid Power as a UNICEF Kid Power Champion, in an effort to fight global malnutrition and as well as raise awareness among kids, via the world's first "wearable for good", created by UNICEF.


title: Alex Morgan

text: In 2017, Morgan and her husband, Servando, traveled to Tanzania as Sports Envoys with the U.S. State Department's Sports Diplomacy Office. In Tanzania, the couple hosted soccer clinics and visited schools, contributing to Sports Diplomacy's mission to promote gender equality and inclusion through sport.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan has been featured in a number of magazines. In the 2012 "Sports Illustrated" Swimsuit Issue, she appeared in a section composed of athletes in body paint. She was featured in the 2013 music issue of "ESPN The Magazine" replicating Katy Perry's "One of the Boys" album cover. In May 2015, Morgan was featured on the cover of "ESPN Magazine" with teammates Abby Wambach and Sydney Leroux. The same year, she appeared on multiple covers of "Sports Illustrated" before and after winning the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. She appeared for a second time in the "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue" in 2015. Morgan posed for one of the three 2019 "Sports Illustrated" Swimsuit Issue covers, the other cover models being Tyra Banks and Camille Kostek. She has appeared on the covers of "Health" and "Self" magazines. She has been featured in "Shape", "Vogue", "Elle", "Time", and "Fortune".


title: Alex Morgan

text: In 2011, Morgan co-starred with national teammate Hope Solo in a television commercial promoting ESPN's "SportsCenter". Morgan and teammate Carli Lloyd were guests on "Live with Kelly and Michael" following the 2012 Summer Olympics in September 2012. In 2013, Morgan appeared in the ESPN documentary series, "Nine for IX". The "Nine for IX" documentary, "The 99ers", in which she appeared focused on the success and legacy of the national team squad that won the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup. In January 2015, she guest-starred on an episode of "Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn" entitled "The Quad Test". In April 2015, Morgan joined Abby Wambach on "American Idol" to announce that the show's season winner would record the official song for Fox's coverage of the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. In May of the same year, her likeness appeared on "The Simpsons" along with Christen Press and Abby Wambach. Morgan was a presenter at the 2015 ESPY Awards and received an ESPY with her teammates for Best Team. In 2018, Morgan made an appearance in the music video for the Maroon 5 song "Girls Like You", which features Cardi B. She was joined by fellow athletes Danica Patrick, Aly Raisman and Chloe Kim who also appeared in the video. In June 2018, Morgan made her acting debut in the direct-to-video film "Alex & Me" with co-star Siena Agudong, where she portrays a poster of herself who comes to life.


title: Alex Morgan

text: In July 2015, Morgan, and her Portland Thorns teammates Christine Sinclair and Steph Catley became the first female athletes to appear on the cover of EA Sports' latest FIFA video game, "FIFA 16". Morgan, Sinclair, and Catley were chosen to appear on its region-specific packaging in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, respectively, alongside Lionel Messi, who appears in worldwide versions of the game. "FIFA 16" was the first edition of the franchise to include women's international teams in the game. In "FIFA 19", Morgan was featured throughout "The Journey" as an interactive character and is credited with a voice role. She was also consulted by EA to help give insight and shape the world of Kim Hunter, the game mode's playable female character.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Following the United States' win at the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, Morgan and her teammates became the first women's sports team to be honored with a ticker tape parade in New York City. Each player received a key to the city from Mayor Bill de Blasio. In October of the same year, the team was honored by President Barack Obama at the White House.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan married soccer player Servando Carrasco on New Year's Eve 2014. The pair met at UC Berkeley where they both played soccer. In October 2019, the couple announced they were expecting a baby girl in April 2020. Their daughter, Charlie Elena Carrasco, was born on May 7 of that year.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Although the name is rarely used any more, Morgan was given the nickname "Baby Horse" by her teammates on the U.S. women's national team for her speed, running style, and youth. Morgan received the key to the city of Diamond Bar, her hometown, on January 24, 2016.


title: Alex Morgan

text: On Sunday, October 1, 2017, Morgan was one of a group of fellow athletes visiting Epcot in Bay Lake, Florida, who were described in a police incident file as being "impaired and verbally aggressive...toward staff and around guests". The group, including Morgan, were removed from the park for "trespass" and no charges were filed. According to a deputy, Morgan was "yelling, screaming and...appeared to be highly impaired". The athlete later posted an apology in a Tweet that read, in part, "I will learn from this and make sure it does not happen again."


title: Alex Morgan

text: In September 2017, Morgan and U.S. teammate Megan Rapinoe were the first two female players in the United States to sign up for the Common Goal campaign, created by Juan Mata of Manchester United, wherein players donate 1% of their wages to support soccer-related charities.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan is an avid martial artist incorporating it into her rigorous workout routine and holding a black belt in Kyokoshin karate. She credits this with improving her balance, strength, flexibility and discipline.


title: Alex Morgan

text: Morgan is vegan. She and NBA player Kyrie Irving were crowned by PETA as Most Beautiful Vegan Celebrities of 2019.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Chuck is an American action comedy/spy-drama television series created by Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. The series is about an "average computer-whiz-next-door" named Chuck Bartowski, played by Zachary Levi, who receives an encoded e-mail from an old college friend now working for the CIA. The message embeds the only remaining copy of a software program containing the United States' greatest spy secrets into Chuck's brain, leading the CIA and the NSA to assign him handlers and use him on top-secret missions. Produced by Fake Empire Productions (known as College Hill Pictures during the first three seasons before folding afterwards), Wonderland Sound and Vision, and Warner Bros. Television, the series premiered on September 24, 2007, on NBC, airing on Monday nights at 8:00 p.m./7:00 p.m. Central. The opening theme song is a wordless edit of "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" by the American rock band Cake.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: As the second season finished, flagging ratings put "Chuck" in danger of cancellation, but fans mounted a successful campaign to encourage NBC to renew the show. The campaign was unique in that fans specifically targeted a sponsor of the show, the Subway restaurant chain, leading to the chain striking a major sponsorship deal with NBC to help cover costs of the third season. The series' renewal was uncertain in each subsequent season. The fifth season was the last, beginning on October 28, 2011, and moving to Friday nights at 8 p.m./7 Central. The series concluded on January 27, 2012, with a two-hour finale.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) is in his mid-twenties and works at Buy More, a Burbank, California, consumer-electronics chain store. He is an intelligent, but unmotivated, computer service expert and works alongside his best friend, Morgan Grimes (Joshua Gomez). He had been expelled from Stanford University on false charges that he cheated in one of his classes, which likely damaged his drive and morale. He lives with his sister, Ellie (Sarah Lancaster), and her boyfriend, Devon "Captain Awesome" Woodcomb (Ryan McPartlin), who are doctors that constantly encourage Chuck to make progress in his professional and romantic life.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Bryce Larkin (Matthew Bomer), Chuck's former Stanford University roommate and now a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent, steals the Intersect, the entire merged database of the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA), and destroys the computer storing it. The sole surviving copy becomes subliminally embedded in Chuck's brain via encoded images when he opens an email from Bryce. The NSA's Major John Casey (Adam Baldwin) and CIA Officer Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) are dispatched to investigate.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Chuck is recruited to use the knowledge he now possesses to help thwart assassins and international terrorists, upending his previously mundane life. The Intersect causes Chuck to receive involuntary "flashes" of information from the database, activated by triggers such as faces, voices, objects, and keywords. In order to protect his family and friends, Chuck must keep his second occupation a secret. Casey and Walker are assigned to watch over Chuck. They are forced to establish an uneasy alliance and cover-identities. Walker poses as Chuck's girlfriend and takes a job at a fast food restaurant near the Buy More. Casey reluctantly becomes part of the Buy More sales team.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: The main antagonists driving the plot are a series of rogue spy cabals, first internal to the United States intelligence community and then global in scope. A core part of the threat is the danger of the Intersect being either captured, making Chuck as much a liability as an asset to the government, or replicated, making Chuck obsolete or outmatched by less scrupulous spies.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Chuck, Sarah, and Casey all face professional conflicts as they grow to respect each other. A genuine romantic interest develops between Chuck and Sarah. Chuck's desire to maintain his close relationships and eventually return to a normal life is challenged by the dangers and growing responsibilities of his secret life, so that he gradually becomes a more competent, confident, and willing spy. In later seasons, upgrades to the Intersect would include skills in espionage as well as information (the reason the Intersect was originally conceived), giving Chuck temporary knowledge of hand-to-hand combat and other skills such as playing the guitar, using a zipline, foreign languages, dancing, and firearms training.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: In the course of events, Chuck unravels mysteries from his life before the series, often dealing with the Intersect, such as why his parents left, why Bryce got him kicked out of Stanford, and why he's unusually suited for the Intersect. Meanwhile, Casey and Sarah confront unresolved issues from their lives before the series, including their families, Sarah's history with Bryce, and the spies they previously worked with. And as Chuck grows more comfortable with his own role, those closest to him are gradually drawn into his spy life.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak wrote the script for the first episode, which was initially given a put pilot commitment by NBC before a pilot order was green lit by the network in January 2007. Schwartz and Fedak both attended the University of Southern California. Fedak pitched the idea to Schwartz, who agreed to develop the project with him. Joseph McGinty Nichol, Schwartz's fellow executive producer on "The O.C.", directed the first hour of the series and consequently became an executive producer via his production company, Wonderland Sound and Vision. Fedak, Peter Johnson, Scott Rosenbaum, Matthew Miller, and Allison Adler also serve as co-executive producers. NBC gave the series an early pick-up and a thirteen-episode order on May 10, 2007. On November 26, 2007, "TV Guide" reported that NBC had picked up the series for a full, 22 episode season.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Zachary Levi and Adam Baldwin were the first two to be cast in February 2007 in the roles of Chuck Bartowski and veteran NSA agent Major John Casey, respectively. Fedak always had Baldwin in mind for the role of John Casey and the producers found that the actor was a "perfect fit" for the character during the first casting session. Relative newcomer Yvonne Strahovski was chosen for the female lead role of what was then CIA officer Sarah Kent in the same month. Casting continued throughout March with Sarah Lancaster, Joshua Gomez, and Natalie Martinez landing the parts of Dr. Ellie Bartowski (Chuck's older sister), Morgan Pace (Chuck's best friend), and Kayla Hart (Chuck's neighbor and love interest), respectively. The Kayla Hart character was dropped before filming because creators Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz found it unlikely and too complicated to the storyline that two women would be pining over Chuck. Morgan's surname was later changed to "Grimes" and Sarah's surname was changed to "Walker".


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Although Chuck's apartment was set in Echo Park, the pilot was shot in El Cabrillo in Hollywood. After the series was picked up, the apartment and the building's courtyard were re-created on a Warner Bros. soundstage. Aerial views throughout the show combine shots of Echo Park and El Cabrillo.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: The exterior shots of the Burbank Buy More where Chuck and Morgan work are of a former Mervyn's store in the Fallbrook Mall in West Hills.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: In May 2007, NBC announced that their official website would launch "MyNBC" allowing users to be more interactive with selected shows. MyNBC would allow fans to delve inside Chuck's "brain" which will host hot spots of top-secret government information that the title character possesses. It will also had bonus video features. In addition, NBC further announced in July 2007 that tie-in micro websites where fans who log onto Buy-More.net would be directed to NerdHerdHelp.com giving them access to exclusive content of the show and a blog written by the title character's best friend and sidekick, Morgan, would be launched in September 2007. NBC was expected to spend about $8 million in total promoting the show.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Despite heavy promotion from NBC and positive critical reviews, "Chuck" suffered in domestic ratings due to stiff competition from established hits from ABC ("Dancing with the Stars"), Fox ("House"), and CBS ("How I Met Your Mother", "Rules of Engagement") in the Monday 8:00–9:00 pm ET timeslot. Its ratings were also affected by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike in the first season and President Barack Obama's prime time news conference that led to the show being preempted for a week in the second season, shortly after NBC had done heavy promotion for the show around the Super Bowl. In May 2010, it was reported that "Chuck" ranked in the top 20 TV shows in the SocialSenseTV ratings report of social media interactions, measuring posts and reads on forums, blogs, and other social media over a three-month period.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: In its first year, Chuck received critical acclaim. "Rolling Stone" magazine included the show on its fall 2007 "We Like to Watch" list, saying the show "wipes the floor with the other fall debuts". "Chuck" landed on "USA Today"'s list of the "10 Picks for 2007" and they called Levi's performance "incredibly winning", giving the comedy three-out-of-four stars. "Chuck" drew numerous comparisons to another critically acclaimed comedy that debuted in Fall 2007—"Reaper"—which also starred a twenty-something underachiever who works in a large retail, "big-box" store (Work Bench) and is drawn into heroism against his will.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: As 2008 drew to a close, the show received further acclaim. In December "Time" magazine named the show one of the top 10 TV series of the year. It also made the year-end top 10 list of the "Chicago Tribune", Television Without Pity's list of "TV Shows We Wish More People Watched", "The Star-Ledger"s "Top TV shows of 2008" (#4), "The Miami Herald"s "TV's Top 5" list, "The New York Observer"s "Top 10 TV Shows of the Year" (#6), and the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" mentions "Chuck" as one of the few bright spots in television in 2008.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: The "Chicago Tribune"'s Maureen Ryan wrote that "the show pays attention to the mechanics of storytelling and doesn't just try to coast on the comedy." She continued, "[Given] the level of attention paid to all those other things—emotion, suspense, plotting, character—"Chuck" ends up being one of the TV scene's greatest pleasures at the moment." "Television Without Pity's" Angel Cohn finds "Chuck" to be a well-written show, saying "it features some of the smartest and most quick-witted dialogue on TV". She praises the ensemble cast and notes "while the first season was good, this show has really hit its stride in its second season." James Poniewozik of "Time" magazine says the show is a "delight" and that with the second season the "new episodes quickly jump back in, with higher stakes and sharper jokes." "The Star-Ledger" Alan Sepinwall calls "Chuck" "the most purely entertaining show currently on television, whether you're talking network or cable." He states that "what makes "Chuck" so special ... is that there's a fundamental warmth and humanity underneath the jokes", with "a cast of appealing characters played by very good actors."


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Going into 2010, Aaron Barnhart of the "Kansas City Star" described the show's premise as "fresh, appealing and limited", expressing concern that "a lot of TV shows overstay their welcome" and fearing that in its third season the show is "about to run out of new, workable ideas". "USA Today" called the show NBC's "best scripted hour".


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: In an article in "The Journal of Popular Culture", Joseph J. Darowski recognizes the series' exploration of technology's impact on individual identity. He discusses the series' themes as a natural progression of the popular culture tradition of man-made technology encroaching first into nature, then into human bodies, and finally into human minds.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Season 1 of "Chuck" enjoyed much formal recognition. The program was mentioned multiple times in IGN's 2007 year-in-review awards. Along with winning the honor of Best New TV Series, Sarah Walker won the award for best TV character, and Chuck and Sarah as a couple won the "Couple That We Rooted for the Most" award. "Chuck" was also nominated for "Best New TV Comedy Series" at the 2008 People's Choice Awards, which aired on January 8, 2008, but lost to "Samantha Who?" The series stunt coordinator Merritt Yohnka won the 2007–2008 Primetime Emmy for "Outstanding Stunt Coordination". "Chuck" was also nominated for "Outstanding Main Title Design" in 2007, but did not win. Merritt Yohnka also won the 2008–2009 Primetime Emmy for "Outstanding Stunt Coordination", back-to-back wins for the same award.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Despite being one of the first series to be renewed by NBC for the 2008–2009 television season, "Chuck" was classified as a show "on the bubble" between renewal and cancellation in April 2009 after NBC decided to delay its decision on its renewal for a third season until early May. The show's second season did not improve on or maintain the audience numbers received in the first season and consistently obtained low ratings, making it one of the least-watched shows in its Monday 8:00 pm ET timeslot. Concerned that the show would not be renewed for a third season, fans launched a "Save Chuck" campaign that gained momentum with the use of social-networking websites like Twitter and Facebook.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Fansite ChuckTV.net launched the first organized fan effort, the Watch/Buy/Share campaign (an idea thought up by "Chuck, vs the podcast" founder Gray Jones), on March 18, 2009; a letter writing campaign was later added to the effort. The week of April 6, 2009, television blogger Kath Skerry changed the name of her website GiveMeMyRemote.com to GiveMeMyChuck.com and used Twitter to notify her readers to support the show, prompting television columnists Alan Sepinwall of "The Star-Ledger", Maureen Ryan of "Chicago Tribune" and Josef Adalian of "TelevisionWeek" to write "Chuck"-related news on their websites and Twitter feeds. Sepinwall also wrote an open letter to NBC on reasons for renewal, while Ryan encouraged fan support by listing the various ways they could contribute to the campaign to save "Chuck". One fan, Wendy Farrington, was inspired by a product placement in second-season episodes to organize a campaign to purchase "Footlong" submarine sandwiches from Subway on the air date of the second-season finale. This movement gained support from various cast and crew members, with actor Zachary Levi seen leading hundreds of fans to a Subway restaurant in Birmingham, England. Members of the show's cast and crew participated in a special "rally cry" episode of Chuck vs the Podcast on April 24, 2009, just before the season finale, to encourage fans to keep the campaign going and thank them for their support. On the campaign, co-creator Josh Schwartz remarked that it "has been one of the most amazing experiences of [his] life to witness—and certainly the most creatively gratifying". Other fan efforts include the "Have a Heart, Renew "Chuck"" campaign, involving "Chuck" fans donating money to the American Heart Association on behalf of NBC. By the NBC Upfront on May 19, 2009 over $17,000 was raised.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: The campaign also prompted press and media coverage, with "The Hollywood Reporter" calling "Chuck" the "most discussed bubble show online". Linda Holmes, writing for NPR, noted the support the campaign has received from both fans and critics, and comments: "It's very common for chasms to open between critics and viewers... But here, critics find themselves passionately advocating for something that's extraordinarily enjoyable to watch." James Poniewozik of "Time" magazine wrote about the efficacy of save-this-show columns and fan protests, saying, "The sad fact of advertising-supported television is that, unlike cable, it still rewards breadth, not depth, of viewership. Four million people who watch a show really hard are still just four million people to an ad buyer. Unless they spend money." He stated that the "Finale & Footlong" campaign was a far more effective way to demonstrate support since Subway is one of the show's major sponsors. However, Josh Bernoff of "Advertising Age" remarks, "Thousands of visible, loyal viewers does not equal millions of actual viewers. Objects in the groundswell may be smaller than they appear. People who congregate online are not a representative sample."


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: In support of the show, Nestlé sent more than 1,000 packs of its Wonka Nerds candies to NBC after Josh Schwartz made such a suggestion to fans in an April 20, 2009 interview with "The New York Times". Additionally, "Chuck" won the annual "Save Our Shows" poll by "USA Today" in which 43,000 people voted, topping the poll with 54% of respondents favoring renewal, beating other bubble shows such as "Cold Case" (45%) and "Without a Trace" (41%). The petition campaigns were also mentioned on the May 12, 2009 episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart".


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: NBC's decision to renew the show for a thirteen-episode third season was announced on May 17, 2009. At that time, both NBC's Ben Silverman and co-creator Chris Fedak confirmed that there was an option nine more episodes. Although Silverman said that NBC was not looking to lower costs, Schwartz said that series production studio Warner Bros. Television had asked the producers to make budget cuts to meet a decrease in the license fee by NBC. Silverman, Fedak and Schwartz promised that the show's quality would not be impacted.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: By October 28, 2009 NBC had picked up an additional six episodes for a total of 19 episodes in Season 3.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Questions about the series' continued viability began before the third season aired. Just hours before the third-season premiere, when asked whether NBC suddenly moving Jay Leno out of primetime lowered the bar for "Chuck", NBC chairman Jeff Gaspin replied, "I wouldn't say the bar's lower, but we obviously have less choice at the moment, so he's got a better shot."


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: When asked about the series' chances of being renewed for a fourth season and whether fans would have to step in again, Angela Bromstad replied, "Well, it's got to maintain, and it depends on development," but said that the show is a "pleasant surprise, and they're doing great work."


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: The ratings for "Chuck" slipped, falling to a series-low 1.9 demo for two weeks running as of the 11th episode of the season, "Chuck Versus the Final Exam." The "TV By The Numbers" website reported on March 23, 2010 that this was "below the ratings level that would indicate likely renewal" despite the overall ratings difficulties that NBC was facing. However, on March 30, 2010, the season's 12th episode, "Chuck Versus the American Hero" saw an increase to a 2.1 share and a 0.2 million viewer rise.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: "Chuck" was also a contestant in E!'s online Save One Show contest for the second year running, where it won with 52% of the vote. The runner up was "One Tree Hill", which garnered 20% of the vote.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: On May 13, 2010, it was announced that "Chuck" had been renewed by NBC for a fourth season. The season received a 13-episode order with an option of an additional nine episodes. The fourth season premiered during NBC's fall 2010 schedule. It retained its current timeslot. The premiere episode of the fourth season was titled "Chuck Versus the Anniversary", and aired on September 20. Season four guest starred Linda Hamilton, Dolph Lundgren, Harry Dean Stanton, Olivia Munn, Steve Austin, Dave Batista, Summer Glau, Timothy Dalton and Eric Roberts. It was announced on October 19, 2010 that NBC had ordered an additional 11 episodes of "Chuck", bringing the episode total for Season 4 to 24.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Speculating on the possibility of a fifth season, Yvonne Strahovski (Sarah Walker) commented that she felt "...[the chances] are pretty good, I will be surprised if we don't get a season five." Her co-star Adam Baldwin (John Casey) concurred.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: It was announced on May 13, 2011 that "Chuck" would be renewed for a fifth, and final, season consisting of thirteen episodes, set to premiere on October 21, 2011. The show was moved from Monday and aired on Friday nights, in what some consider to be a Friday night death slot. The premiere was later pushed a week later to October 28.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: The first showing of the pilot occurred on July 27, 2007 at Comic-Con International in San Diego. The series was originally slated to air on Tuesday nights at 9/8c as announced at the 2007 upfronts but this was later changed to Monday nights at 8/7c as announced during the 2007 Television Critics Association summer press tour. The season premiere aired on September 24, 2007 on NBC. The pilot was leaked onto torrent websites on July 22, 2007. All thirteen episodes produced before the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike have aired. The last two episodes of the original thirteen aired on January 24, 2008, with episode 12 airing at 8/7c and episode 13 at 10/9c, three days after they aired in Canada.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Despite receiving a full season pickup, the first season contained only thirteen episodes; production was stalled due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Season Two premiered on September 29, 2008. While the series originally had a 13 episode order, NBC ordered another nine, ensuring the series would get the full 22-episode treatment. The theme song is "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" by Cake.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: On February 2, 2009, "Chuck" broadcast a full-length 3D television episode. The episode was broadcast using the ColorCode 3-D stereoscopy system, and could be viewed by wearing a pair of glasses distributed as part of a national promotion for the movie "Monsters Vs. Aliens", which was sponsored by Intel.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Season 4 appeared on the fall lineup and later received an order for 11 additional episodes on October 18, 2010.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Season 1-3 were broadcast on Virgin 1 in the UK and Season 4 on Sky Living. In June 2022, all series became available on ITV Hub.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: In an aggressive marketing campaign by NBC, the pilot episode was released across a broad range of media from satellite broadcasting to popular social networking websites such as Facebook, shown on United Airlines flights, freely distributed on video on demand on about 30 cable and satellite systems including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Dish Network, on Yahoo, and from Amazon Unbox.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Also, prior to the airing of "Chuck" in the United Kingdom, the pilot episode was released as a free temporary download on iTunes.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: A full week before the second season's U.S. premiere, iTunes offered a free download of the first episode as a 'pre-air premiere'. This promotion was also available on the Xbox Live Marketplace.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: All episodes of Seasons 1 through 5 are available for purchase in the U.S. at the iTunes Store, PlayStation Network, Amazon Video, and Xbox Live Marketplace.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: The DVD and Blu-ray Disc box sets of "The Complete First Season" contain the same special features: deleted scenes ("Declassified Scenes"); "Chuck's World—an inside look at character development and casting sessions"; "Chuck on Chuck"—commentaries by Zachary Levi, Joshua Gomez, Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak; bloopers ("Chuck vs. the Chuckles"); and "Chuck's Online World—a gallery of web originated mini-featurettes".


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: On October 28, 2009, Warner Home Video announced that the second season of "Chuck" would be released on January 5, 2010. Like its predecessor, "Chuck: The Complete Second Season" was made available in both DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats. "Time" magazine put the DVD on its short list for January 2010, saying "Nerd wish fulfillment doesn't get funnier than this."


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: "The Complete Third Season" was released on September 7, 2010 on both DVD and Blu-ray Disc in Region 1 and October 25, 2010.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: On June 1, 2011, Warner Home Video announced that the fourth season of "Chuck" release date for both DVD and Blu-ray Disc was September 6, 2011, but this was changed to October 11, 2011.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: In February 2012 Warner Brothers announced a complete Seasons 1-5 box set available on both Blu-ray and DVD to be released May 8 in conjunction with the Season 5 box set. This box set contains 19 discs (Blu-ray) or 23 discs (DVD) and includes all special features available in current releases.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: In the UK, only DVD box sets are released and not Blu-ray. Chuck Season 5 was released on September 24, 2012 on iTunes in the UK with the release of the DVD box set being released less than a month later on October 15, 2012.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: In Australia, the complete Seasons 1-5 DVD box set became available on August 1, 2012 in conjunction with the release of the Season 5 DVD set. Chuck has also been released individually on Blu-Ray alongside the DVD releases.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: Wildstorm, a DC Comics imprint, produced a six-issue mini-series written by Peter Johnson and Zev Borow (series co-executive producer and writer, respectively), with art by Jeremy Haun and Phil Noto. It started in June 2008. A trade paperback collection was published in July 2009. It also includes a public service announcement on brushing one's teeth from Captain Awesome and two gag adventures with Morgan based on film noir and "The Odyssey". (WildStorm also releases Brian K. Vaughan's "Ex Machina", a series which sees its main character fused with a technological structure, issue No. 39 of which is used within "Chuck" to conceal the Intersect Operating manual from General Beckman, Casey and Sarah for Chuck's studies from Season 2, episode No. 17 onwards.)


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: On April 17, 2020, Entertainment Weekly reunited the entire cast to do a table read via Zoom of the Season 3, Episode 9. The reunion was part of EW's #UnitedAtHome campaign. It also served as a charity drive for Feeding America's COVID-19 Response Fund.


title: Chuck (TV series)

text: In March 2013, Levi told "Entertainment Weekly" that Warner Brothers' use of Kickstarter to fund previously shut-down TV series could possibly open the door for a "Chuck" film. However, he cited conflicts with "Chuck" broadcasts in other countries, such as Japan, as the main reason that a film would not be started anytime soon. In March 2017, Levi told Larry King that he was "working on it" (the film) and that it was a "steady but sure process". In March 2020, Levi told on Instagram Live session that he is still interested in making the film happen. In December 2021, Levi told Robert Littal of Black Sports Online that he would love to see a "Chuck" movie while speaking about his movie "American Underdog", which starred Levi and his former Chuck co-star Adam Baldwin.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966), also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger used her writings and speeches primarily to promote her way of thinking. She was prosecuted for her book "Family Limitation" under the Comstock Act in 1914. She feared the consequences of her writings, so she fled to Britain until public opinion had quieted. Sanger's efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalize contraception in the United States. Due to her connection with Planned Parenthood, Sanger is frequently criticized by opponents of abortion. However, Sanger drew a sharp distinction between birth control and abortion and was opposed to abortions throughout the bulk of her professional career, declining to participate in them as a nurse. Sanger remains an admired figure in the American reproductive rights movement. She has been criticized for supporting eugenics.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, which led to her arrest for distributing information on contraception, after an undercover policewoman bought a copy of her pamphlet on family planning. Her subsequent trial and appeal generated controversy. Sanger felt that in order for women to have a more equal footing in society and to lead healthier lives, they needed to be able to determine when to bear children. She also wanted to prevent so-called back-alley abortions, which were common at the time because abortions were illegal in the United States. She believed that, while abortion may be a viable option in life-threatening situations for the pregnant, it should generally be avoided. She considered contraception the only practical way to avoid them.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In New York City, she organized the first birth control clinic to be staffed by all-female doctors, as well as a clinic in Harlem which had an all African-American advisory council, where African-American staff were later added. In 1929, she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, which served as the focal point of her lobbying efforts to legalize contraception in the United States. From 1952 to 1959, Sanger served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. She died in 1966 and is widely regarded as a founder of the modern birth control movement.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins in 1879 in Corning, New York, to Irish Catholic parents—a "free-thinking" stonemason father, Michael Hennessey Higgins, and Anne Purcell Higgins. Michael had immigrated to the United States aged 14, joining the Army in the Civil War as a drummer aged 15. Upon leaving the army, he studied medicine and phrenology but ultimately became a stonecutter, chiseling-out angels, saints, and tombstones. Michael became an atheist and an activist for women's suffrage and free public education.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Anne accompanied her family to Canada during the Great Famine. She married Michael in 1869. In 22 years, Anne Higgins conceived 18 times, birthing 11 alive before dying aged 49. Sanger was the sixth of 11 surviving children, spending her early years in a bustling household.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Supported by her two older sisters, Margaret Higgins attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute, before enrolling in 1900 at White Plains Hospital as a nurse probationer. In 1902, she married architect William Sanger, giving up her education. Suffering from consumption (recurring active tubercular), Margaret Sanger was able to bear three children, and the five settled down to a quiet life in Westchester, New York. Margaret would become a member of an Episcopal Church which would later hold her funeral service.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In 1911, after a fire destroyed their home in Hastings-on-Hudson, the Sangers abandoned the suburbs for a new life in New York City. Margaret Sanger worked as a visiting nurse in the slums of the East Side, while her husband worked as an architect and a house painter. The couple became active in local socialist politics. She joined the Women's Committee of the New York Socialist party, took part in the labor actions of the Industrial Workers of the World (including the notable 1912 Lawrence textile strike and the 1913 Paterson silk strike) and became involved with local intellectuals, left-wing artists, socialists and social activists, including John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge and Emma Goldman.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger's political interests, her emerging feminism and her nursing experience all led her to write two series of columns on sex education which were titled "What Every Mother Should Know" (1911–12) and "What Every Girl Should Know" (1912–13) for the socialist magazine "New York Call." By the standards of the day, Sanger's articles were extremely frank in their discussion of sexuality, and many "New York Call" readers were outraged by them. Other readers, however, praised the series for its candor. One stated that the series contained "a purer morality than whole libraries full of hypocritical cant about modesty". Both were published in book form in 1916.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: During her work among working-class immigrant women, Sanger met women who underwent frequent childbirth, miscarriages and self-induced abortions for lack of information on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Access to contraceptive information was prohibited on grounds of obscenity by the 1873 federal Comstock law and a host of state laws. Seeking to help these women, Sanger visited public libraries, but was unable to find information on contraception. These problems were epitomized in a story that Sanger would later recount in her speeches: while Sanger was working as a nurse, she was called to the apartment of a woman, "Sadie Sachs", who had become extremely ill due to a self-induced abortion. Afterward, Sadie begged the attending doctor to tell her how she could prevent this from happening again, to which the doctor simply advised her to remain abstinent. His exact words and actions, apparently, were to laugh and say "You want your cake while you eat it too, do you? Well it can't be done. I'll tell you the only sure thing to do ... Tell Jake to sleep on the roof." A few months later, Sanger was called back to Sadie's apartment—only this time, Sadie died shortly after Sanger arrived. She had attempted yet another self-induced abortion. Sanger would sometimes end the story by saying, "I threw my nursing bag in the corner and announced ... that I would never take another case until I had made it possible for working women in America to have the knowledge to control birth"; biographer concluded that Sachs may have been "an imaginative, dramatic composite".


title: Margaret Sanger

text: This story—along with Sanger's 1904 rescue of her unwanted niece Olive Byrne from the snowbank in which she had been left—marks the beginning of Sanger's commitment to spare women from the pursuit of dangerous and illegal abortions. Sanger opposed abortion, but primarily as a societal ill and public health danger which would disappear if women were able to prevent unwanted pregnancy.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Given the connection between contraception and working-class empowerment, Sanger came to believe that only by liberating women from the risk of unwanted pregnancy would fundamental social change take place. She launched a campaign to challenge governmental censorship of contraceptive information through confrontational actions.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger became estranged from her husband in 1913, and the couple's divorce was finalized in 1921. In 1922, she married her second husband, James Noah H. Slee.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In 1914, Sanger launched "The Woman Rebel", an eight-page monthly newsletter which promoted contraception using the slogan "No Gods, No Masters". Sanger, collaborating with anarchist friends, popularized the term "birth control" as a more candid alternative to euphemisms such as "family limitation"; the term "birth control" was suggested in 1914 by a young friend called Otto Bobstei Sanger proclaimed that each woman should be "the absolute mistress of her own body." In these early years of Sanger's activism, she viewed birth control as a free-speech issue, and when she started publishing "The Woman Rebel", one of her goals was to provoke a legal challenge to the federal anti-obscenity laws which banned dissemination of information about contraception. Though postal authorities suppressed five of its seven issues, Sanger continued publication, all the while preparing "Family Limitation", another challenge to anti-birth control laws. This 16-page pamphlet contained detailed and precise information and graphic descriptions of various contraceptive methods. In August 1914, Margaret Sanger was indicted for violating postal obscenity laws by sending "The Woman Rebel" through the postal system. Rather than stand trial, she fled the country.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Margaret Sanger spent much of her 1914 exile in England, where contact with British neo-Malthusians such as Charles Vickery Drysdale helped refine her socioeconomic justifications for birth control. She shared their concern that over-population led to poverty, famine and war. At the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian Conference in 1922, she was the first woman to chair a session. She organized the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth-Control Conference that took place in New York in 1925. Over-population would remain a concern of hers for the rest of her life.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: During her 1914 trip to England, she was also profoundly influenced by the liberation theories of Havelock Ellis, under whose tutelage she sought not just to make sexual intercourse safer for women but more pleasurable. Around this time she met Marie Stopes, who had run into Sanger after she had just given a talk on birth control at a Fabian Society meeting. Stopes showed Sanger her writings and sought her advice about a chapter on contraception.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Early in 1915, Margaret Sanger's estranged husband, William Sanger, gave a copy of "Family Limitation" to a representative of anti-vice politician Anthony Comstock. William Sanger was tried and convicted, spending thirty days in jail while attracting interest in birth control as an issue of civil liberty. Margaret's second husband, Noah Slee, also lent his help to her life's work. In 1928, Slee would smuggle diaphragms into New York through Canada in boxes labeled as 3-In-One Oil. He later became the first legal manufacturer of diaphragms in the United States.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Some countries in northwestern Europe had more liberal policies towards contraception than the United States at the time, and when Sanger visited a Dutch birth control clinic in 1915, she learned about diaphragms and became convinced that they were a more effective means of contraception than the suppositories and douches that she had been distributing back in the United States. Diaphragms were generally unavailable in the United States, so Sanger and others began importing them from Europe, in defiance of United States law.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: On October 16, 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic at 46 Amboy Street in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States. Nine days after the clinic opened, Sanger was arrested. Sanger's bail was set at $500 and she went back home. Sanger continued seeing some women in the clinic until the police came a second time. This time, Sanger and her sister, Ethel Byrne, were arrested for breaking a New York state law that prohibited distribution of contraceptives. Sanger was also charged with running a public nuisance. Sanger and Byrne went to trial in January 1917. Byrne was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse but went on a hunger strike. She was force-fed, the first woman hunger striker in the US to be so treated. Only when Sanger pledged that Byrne would never break the law was she pardoned after ten days. Sanger was convicted; the trial judge held that women did not have "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception." Sanger was offered a more lenient sentence if she promised to not break the law again, but she replied: "I cannot respect the law as it exists today." For this, she was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse. An initial appeal was rejected, but in a subsequent court proceeding in 1918, the birth control movement won a victory when Judge Frederick E. Crane of the New York Court of Appeals issued a ruling which allowed doctors to prescribe contraception. The publicity surrounding Sanger's arrest, trial, and appeal sparked birth control activism across the United States and earned the support of numerous donors, who would provide her with funding and support for future endeavors.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: After World War I, Sanger shifted away from radical politics, and she founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) in 1921 to enlarge her base of supporters to include the middle class. The founding principles of the ABCL were as follows:


title: Margaret Sanger

text: After Sanger's appeal of her conviction for the Brownsville clinic secured a 1918 court ruling that exempted physicians from the law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptive information to women (provided it was prescribed for medical reason), she established the Clinical Research Bureau (CRB) in 1923 to exploit this loophole. The CRB was the first legal birth control clinic in the United States, staffed entirely by female doctors and social workers. The clinic received extensive funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his family, who continued to make anonymous donations to Sanger's causes in subsequent decades.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated five thousand dollars to her American Birth Control League in 1924 and a second time in 1925.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In 1922, she traveled to China, Korea, and Japan. In China, she observed that the primary method of family planning was female infanticide, and she later worked with Pearl Buck to establish a family planning clinic in Shanghai. Sanger visited Japan six times, working with Japanese feminist Kato Shidzue to promote birth control.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In 1928, conflict within the birth control movement leadership led Sanger to resign as the president of the ABCL and take full control of the CRB, renaming it the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB), marking the beginning of a schism that would last until 1938.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger invested a great deal of effort communicating with the general public. From 1916 onward, she frequently lectured (in churches, women's clubs, homes, and theaters) to workers, churchmen, liberals, socialists, scientists, and upper-class women. She once lectured on birth control to the women's auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey. In her autobiography, she justified her decision to address them by writing "Always to me any aroused group was a good group," meaning that she was willing to seek common ground with anyone who might help promote legalization and awareness of birth-control. She described the experience as "weird", and reported that she had the impression that the audience were all half-wits, and, therefore, spoke to them in the simplest possible language, as if she were talking to children.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: She wrote several books in the 1920s which had a nationwide impact in promoting the cause of birth control. Between 1920 and 1926, 567,000 copies of "Woman and the New Race" and "The Pivot of Civilization" were sold. She also wrote two autobiographies designed to promote the cause. The first, "My Fight for Birth Control", was published in 1931 and the second, more promotional version, "Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography", was published in 1938.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: During the 1920s, Sanger received hundreds of thousands of letters, many of them written in desperation by women begging for information on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Five hundred of these letters were compiled into the 1928 book, "Motherhood in Bondage."


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger worked with African American leaders and professionals who saw a need for birth control in their communities. In 1929, James H. Hubert, a Black social worker and the leader of New York's Urban League, asked Sanger to open a clinic in Harlem. Sanger secured funding from the Julius Rosenwald Fund and opened the clinic, staffed with Black doctors, in 1930. The clinic was directed by a 15-member advisory board consisting of Black doctors, nurses, clergy, journalists, and social workers. The clinic was publicized in the African-American press as well as in Black churches, and it received the approval of W.E.B. Du Bois, the co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the editor of its magazine, " The Crisis." Sanger did not tolerate bigotry among her staff, nor would she tolerate any refusal to work within interracial projects. Sanger's work with minorities earned praise from Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr.; when he was not able to attend his Margaret Sanger award ceremony, in May 1966, Mrs. King read her husband's acceptance speech that praised Sanger, but first said her own words: "Because of [Sanger's] dedication, her deep convictions, and for her suffering for what she believed in, I would like to say that I am proud to be a woman tonight."


title: Margaret Sanger

text: From 1939 to 1942, Sanger was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America, which included a supervisory role—alongside Mary Lasker and Clarence Gamble—in the Negro Project, an effort to deliver information about birth control to poor Black people. Sanger advised Dr. Gamble on the utility of hiring a Black physician for the Negro Project. She also advised him on the importance of reaching out to Black ministers, writing:


title: Margaret Sanger

text: The ministers work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the [Birth Control] Federation [of America] as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: New York University's Margaret Sanger Papers Project says that though the letter would have been meant to avoid the mistaken notion that the Negro Project was a racist campaign, detractors of Sanger, such as Angela Davis, have interpreted the passage "as evidence that she led a calculated effort to reduce the Black population against its will". Others, such as Charles Valenza, state that this notion is based on a misreading of Sanger's words. He believes that Sanger wanted to overcome the fear of some black people that birth control was "the white man's way of reducing the black population".


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In 1929, Sanger formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control in order to lobby for legislation to overturn restrictions on contraception. That effort failed to achieve success, so Sanger ordered a diaphragm from Japan in 1932, in order to provoke a decisive battle in the courts. The diaphragm was confiscated by the United States government, and Sanger's subsequent legal challenge led to a 1936 court decision which overturned an important provision of the Comstock laws which prohibited physicians from obtaining contraceptives. This court victory motivated the American Medical Association in 1937 to adopt contraception as a normal medical service and a key component of medical school curriculums.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: This 1936 contraception court victory was the culmination of Sanger's birth control efforts, and she took the opportunity, now in her late 50s, to move to Tucson, Arizona, intending to play a less critical role in the birth control movement. In spite of her original intentions, she remained active in the movement through the 1950s.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In 1937, Sanger became chairman of the newly formed Birth Control Council of America, and attempted to resolve the schism between the ABCL and the BCCRB. Her efforts were successful, and the two organizations merged in 1939 as the Birth Control Federation of America. Although Sanger continued in the role of president, she no longer wielded the same power as she had in the early years of the movement, and in 1942, more conservative forces within the organization changed the name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a name Sanger objected to because she considered it too euphemistic.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In 1948, Sanger helped found the International Committee on Planned Parenthood, which evolved into the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1952, and soon became the world's largest non-governmental international women's health, family planning and birth control organization. Sanger was the organization's first president and served in that role until she was 80 years old. In the early 1950s, Sanger encouraged philanthropist Katharine McCormick to provide funding for biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the birth control pill which was eventually sold under the name Enovid. Pincus had recruited Dr. John Rock, Harvard gynecologist, to investigate clinical use of progesterone to prevent ovulation. (Jonathan Eig (2014). "The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution." W. W. Norton & Company. New York. London. pp. 104ff.) Pincus would often say that he never could have done it without Sanger, McCormick, and Rock. (Ibid., p. 312.)


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger died of congestive heart failure in 1966 in Tucson, Arizona, aged 86, about a year after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in "Griswold v. Connecticut", which legalized birth control in the United States. Sanger called herself an Episcopalian by religion and her funeral was held at St. Philip's in the Hills Episcopal Church. Sanger is buried in Fishkill, New York, next to her sister, Nan Higgins, and her second husband, Noah Slee. One of her surviving brothers was College Football Hall of Fame player and Pennsylvania State University Head Football coach Bob Higgins.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: While researching information on contraception, Sanger read treatises on sexuality including "The Psychology of Sex" by the English psychologist Havelock Ellis and was heavily influenced by it. While traveling in Europe in 1914, Sanger met Ellis. Influenced by Ellis, Sanger adopted his view of sexuality as a powerful, liberating force. This view provided another argument in favor of birth control, because it would enable women to fully enjoy sexual relations without fear of unwanted pregnancy. Sanger also believed that sexuality, along with birth control, should be discussed with more candor, and praised Ellis for his efforts in this direction. She also blamed Christianity for the suppression of such discussions.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger opposed excessive sexual indulgence. She wrote that "every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells thinking deeply, are never sensual." Sanger said that birth control would elevate women away from the position of being objects of lust and elevate sex away from an activity that was purely being engaged in for the purpose of satisfying lust, saying that birth control "denies that sex should be reduced to the position of sensual lust, or that woman should permit herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction." Sanger wrote that masturbation was dangerous. She stated: "In my personal experience as a trained nurse while attending persons afflicted with various and often revolting diseases, no matter what their ailments, I never found anyone so repulsive as the chronic masturbator. It would not be difficult to fill page upon page of heart-rending confessions made by young girls, whose lives were blighted by this pernicious habit, always begun so innocently." She believed that women had the ability to control their sexual impulses, and should utilize that control to avoid sex outside of relationships marked by "confidence and respect". She believed that exercising such control would lead to the "strongest and most sacred passion". Sanger maintained links with affiliates of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (which contained a number of high-profile gay men and sexual reformers as members), and gave a speech to the group on the issue of sexual continence. She later praised Ellis for clarifying "the question of homosexuals ... making the thing a—not exactly a perverted thing, but a thing that a person is born with different kinds of eyes, different kinds of structures and so forth ... that he didn't make all homosexuals perverts—and I thought he helped clarify that to the medical profession and to the scientists of the world as perhaps one of the first ones to do that.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger opposed censorship throughout her career. Sanger grew up in a home where orator Robert Ingersoll was admired. During the early years of her activism, Sanger viewed birth control primarily as a free-speech issue, rather than as a feminist issue, and when she started publishing "The Woman Rebel" in 1914, she did so with the express goal of provoking a legal challenge to the Comstock laws banning dissemination of information about contraception. In New York, Emma Goldman introduced Sanger to members of the Free Speech League, such as Edward Bliss Foote and Theodore Schroeder, and subsequently the League provided funding and advice to help Sanger with legal battles.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Over the course of her career, Sanger was arrested at least eight times for expressing her views during an era in which speaking publicly about contraception was illegal. Numerous times in her career, local government officials prevented Sanger from speaking by shuttering a facility or threatening her hosts. In Boston in 1929, city officials under the leadership of James Curley threatened to arrest her if she spoke. In response she stood on stage, silent, with a gag over her mouth, while her speech was read by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: After World War I, Sanger increasingly appealed to the societal need to limit births by those least able to afford children. The affluent and educated already limited their child-bearing, while the poor and uneducated lacked access to contraception and information about birth control. Here she found an area of overlap with eugenicists. She believed that they both sought to "assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit." She distinguished herself from other eugenicists, by writing " imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her duty to the state. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother." Sanger was a proponent of negative eugenics, which aimed to improve human hereditary traits through social intervention by reducing the reproduction of those who were considered unfit.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger's view of eugenics was influenced by Havelock Ellis and other British eugenicists, including H. G. Wells, with whom she formed a close, lasting friendship. She did not speak specifically to the idea of race or ethnicity being determining factors and "although Sanger articulated birth control in terms of racial betterment and, like most old-stock Americans, supported restricted immigration, she always defined fitness in individual rather than racial terms." Instead, she stressed limiting the number of births to live within one's economic ability to raise and support healthy children. This would lead to a betterment of society and the human race. Sanger's view put her at odds with leading American eugenicists, such as Charles Davenport, who took a racist view of inherited traits. In "A History of the Birth Control Movement in America", Engelman also noted that "Sanger quite effortlessly looked the other way when others spouted racist speech. She had no reservations about relying on flawed and overtly racist works to serve her own propaganda needs." Sanger was supported by one of the most racist authors in America in the 1920s, the Klansman Lothrop Stoddard, who was a founding member of the Board of Directors of Sanger's American Birth Control League. Biographer Ellen Chesler commented: "Margaret Sanger was never herself a racist, but she lived in a profoundly bigoted society, and her failure to repudiate prejudice unequivocally—especially when it was manifest among proponents of her cause—has haunted her ever since."


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In "The Morality of Birth Control", a 1921 speech, she divided society into three groups: the "educated and informed" class that regulated the size of their families, the "intelligent and responsible" who desired to control their families in spite of lacking the means or the knowledge, and the "irresponsible and reckless people" whose religious scruples "prevent their exercising control over their numbers". Sanger concludes, "There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped."


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger's eugenics policies included an exclusionary immigration policy, free access to birth control methods, and full family planning autonomy for the able-minded, as well as compulsory segregation or sterilization for the "profoundly retarded". Sanger wrote, "we [do not] believe that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and unintelligent breeding." In "The Pivot of Civilization" she criticized certain charity organizations for providing free obstetric and immediate post-birth care to indigent women without also providing information about birth control nor any assistance in raising or educating the children. By such charities, she wrote, "The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid bringing into the world her eighth."


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In personal correspondence she expressed her sadness about the aggressive and lethal Nazi eugenics program, and donated to the American Council Against Nazi Propaganda.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger believed that self-determining motherhood was the only unshakable foundation for racial betterment. Initially she advocated that the responsibility for birth control should remain with able-minded individual parents rather than the state. Later, she proposed that "Permits for parenthood shall be issued upon application by city, county, or state authorities to married couples," but added that the requirement should be implemented by state advocacy and reward for complying, not enforced by punishing anyone for violating it.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Margaret Sanger opposed abortion and sharply distinguished it from birth control. She believed that the latter is a fundamental right of women and the former is a shameful crime. In 1916, when she opened her first birth control clinic, she was employing harsh rhetoric against abortion. Flyers she distributed to women exhorted them in all capitals: "Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent." Sanger's patients at that time were told "that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but it was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun." Sanger consistently distanced herself from any calls for legal access to abortion, arguing that legal access to contraceptives would remove the need for abortion. Ann Hibner Koblitz has argued that Sanger's anti-abortion stance contributed to the further stigmatization of abortion and impeded the growth of the broader reproductive rights movement.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: While Margaret Sanger condemned abortion as a method of family limitation, she was not opposed to abortion intended to save a woman's life. Furthermore, in 1932, Margaret Sanger directed the Clinical Research Bureau to start referring patients to hospitals for therapeutic abortions when indicated by an examining physician. She also advocated for birth control so that the pregnancies that led to therapeutic abortions could be prevented in the first place.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger's writings are curated by two universities: New York University's history department maintains the "Margaret Sanger Papers Project", and Smith College's Sophia Smith Collection maintains the "Margaret Sanger Papers" collection.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger's story also features in several biographies, including David Kennedy's biography "Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger" (1970), which won the Bancroft Prize and the John Gilmary Shea Prize. She is also the subject of the television films "Portrait of a Rebel: The Remarkable Mrs. Sanger" (1980), and "" (1995). In 2013, the American cartoonist Peter Bagge published "Woman Rebel", a full-length graphic-novel biography of Sanger. In 2016, Sabrina Jones published the graphic novel "Our Lady of Birth Control: A Cartoonist's Encounter With Margaret Sanger."


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Sanger has been recognized with several honors. Her speech "Children's Era", given in 1925, is listed as #81 in American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century (listed by rank). Sanger was an inspiration for Wonder Woman, the comic-book character introduced by William Marston in 1941. Marston was influenced by early feminist thought while in college, and later formed a romantic relationship with Sanger's niece, Olive Byrne. According to Jill Lepore, several Wonder Woman story lines were at least in part inspired by Sanger, like the character's involvement with different labor strikes and protests. Between (and including) 1953 and 1963, Sanger was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 31 times. In 1957, the American Humanist Association named her Humanist of the Year. In 1966, Planned Parenthood began issuing its Margaret Sanger Awards annually to honor "individuals of distinction in recognition of excellence and leadership in furthering reproductive health and reproductive rights". The 1979 artwork "The Dinner Party" features a place setting for her. In 1981, Sanger was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 1976, she was inducted into the first class of the Steuben County (NY) Hall of Fame. In 1993, the United States National Park Service designated the Margaret Sanger Clinic—where she provided birth-control services in New York in the mid-twentieth century—as a National Historic Landmark. As well, government authorities and other institutions have memorialized Sanger by dedicating several landmarks in her name, including a residential building on the Stony Brook University campus, a room in Wellesley College's library, and Margaret Sanger Square in New York City's Noho area. There is a Margaret Sanger Lane in Plattsburgh, New York and an Allée Margaret Sanger in Saint-Nazaire, France. There is a bust of Sanger in the National Portrait Gallery, which was a gift from Cordelia Scaife May. Sanger, a crater in the northern hemisphere of Venus, takes its name from Margaret Sanger.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: Due to her connection with Planned Parenthood, many who oppose abortion frequently condemn Sanger by criticizing her views on birth control and eugenics.


title: Margaret Sanger

text: In July, 2020, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York announced their intention to rename the Planned Parenthood headquarters on Bleecker Street, which was named after Sanger. This decision was made in response to criticisms over Sanger's promotion of eugenics. In announcing the decision, Karen Seltzer explained, "The removal of Margaret Sanger's name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood's contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color."


title: Vito Corleone

text: Vito Corleone (born Vito Andolini) is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's 1969 novel "The Godfather" and in the first two of Francis Ford Coppola's film trilogy. Vito is originally portrayed by Marlon Brando in the 1972 film "The Godfather", and later by Oreste Baldini as a boy and by Robert De Niro as a young man in "The Godfather Part II" (1974). He is an orphaned Sicilian immigrant who builds a Mafia empire.


title: Vito Corleone

text: He and his wife Carmela have four children: Santino ("Sonny"), Frederico ("Fredo"), and Michael, and one daughter Constanzia ("Connie"). Vito informally adopts Sonny's friend, Tom Hagen, who becomes his lawyer and "consigliere". Upon Vito's death, Michael succeeds him as Don of the Corleone crime family.


title: Vito Corleone

text: Vito oversees a business founded on gambling, bootlegging, prostitution, and union corruption, but he is known as a kind, generous man who lives by a strict moral code of loyalty to friends and, above all, family. He is also known as a traditionalist who demands respect commensurate with his status; even his closest friends refer to him as "Godfather" or "Don Corleone" rather than "Vito".


title: Vito Corleone

text: Vito Corleone is based on a composite of mid-20th century New York Mafia figures Carlo Gambino, Frank Costello, Joe Bonanno, and Joe Profaci.


title: Vito Corleone

text: The character's story begins as Vito Andolini in Corleone, Sicily, in the Kingdom of Italy. In the novel, he was said to be born on April 29, 1887, which his tombstone reads in the first film; however, the second film establishes his birthdate as December 7, 1891. In 1901, the local mafia chieftain, Don Ciccio, murders Vito's father Antonio when he refuses to pay him tribute. Paolo, Vito's older brother, swears revenge, but Ciccio's men kill him too. Vito's mother begs Ciccio to spare Vito, but Ciccio refuses, reasoning the boy will seek revenge as a grown man. Upon Ciccio's refusal, Vito's mother holds a knife to Ciccio's throat, allowing her son to escape while Ciccio's men kill her. Family friends smuggle Vito out of Sicily, putting him on a ship with immigrants traveling to America. At Ellis Island, an immigration official renames him "Vito Corleone" presumably by mistake, using his village for his surname. He later uses "Andolini" as his middle name in acknowledgment of his family heritage.


title: Vito Corleone

text: Vito is taken in by the Abbandando family, who are distant relatives of his, in Little Italy on New York's Lower East Side. Vito grows very close to the Abbandandos, particularly their son, Genco, who is like a brother to him. Vito earns an honest living at the Abbandandos' grocery store, but the elder Abbandando is forced to fire him when Don Fanucci, a blackhander and the local neighborhood "padrone", demands that the grocery hire his nephew.


title: Vito Corleone

text: In 1920, Vito is befriended by small-time criminals Peter Clemenza and Salvatore Tessio, who teach him how to survive by fencing stolen dresses and performing favors in return for loyalty. Fanucci learns of Vito's operation and demands a cut of his illegal profits or he will report Vito and his partners to the police. Vito then devises a plan to kill Fanucci. During the festival of Saint Rocco, Vito trails Fanucci from Little Italy's rooftops, jumping from one building to the next, as Fanucci walks home. Vito enters Fanucci's building and shoots him in the chest, face and throat, killing him. Vito then takes over the neighborhood, treating it with far greater respect than Fanucci did.


title: Vito Corleone

text: Vito and Genco start the Genco Pura Olive Oil Company, an olive oil importer. It eventually becomes the nation's largest olive oil importing company, and the main legal front for Vito's growing organized crime syndicate. Between Genco Pura and his illegal operations, Vito becomes a wealthy man. In 1923, he returns to Sicily for the first time since fleeing as a child. He and his partner Don Tommasino systematically eliminate Don Ciccio's men who were involved in murdering Vito's family and arrange a meeting with Ciccio himself. The elderly Ciccio is nearly blind and deaf, and fails to recognize the now adult Vito. When Ciccio asks him to approach, he reveals himself to be the son of Antonio Andolini and carves open the elderly Don's stomach, thus avenging his family. Tommasino takes over the town and is the family's staunchest ally in the old country for the next half-century.


title: Vito Corleone

text: By the early 1930s, Vito has organized his criminal operations as the Corleone crime family, one of the most powerful in the nation. Genco Abbandando is his "consigliere", and Clemenza and Tessio are "caporegimes". As a boy, Vito's oldest son, Sonny, brings his friend Tom Hagen, a homeless orphan, to stay with the Corleones and Vito unofficially adopts him. As an adult, Sonny becomes a "capo", Vito's heir apparent and "de facto" underboss. Fredo, Vito's second-born son, is deemed too weak and unintelligent to handle important family business and takes on only minor responsibilities. Vito has a difficult relationship with his youngest son, Michael, who wants nothing to do with the family business. Michael enlists to fight in World War II against Vito's wishes. When Michael is wounded in combat, Vito pulls strings to have him honorably discharged and sent back to the U.S., without Michael's knowledge.


title: Vito Corleone

text: Around 1939, Vito moves his home and base of operations to Long Beach, New York on Long Island, where Genco serves as his most trusted adviser until he is stricken with cancer and can no longer fulfill his duties. Hagen, who by now has become a practicing attorney, takes Genco's place.


title: Vito Corleone

text: Vito prides himself on being careful and reasonable, but does not completely forsake violence. When his godson, singer Johnny Fontane, wants to be released from his contract with a bandleader, Vito offers to buy him out, but the bandleader refuses. Vito then makes the bandleader an "offer he can't refuse": he has his fearsome personal assassin, Luca Brasi, put a gun to the bandleader's head, and tells the bandleader that, in five seconds, either his signature or his brains will be on the contract.


title: Vito Corleone

text: In 1945, Vito hosts Connie's wedding to small-time criminal Carlo Rizzi, and honors the Sicilian tradition of granting favors on his daughter's wedding day. He agrees to have Clemenza's men beat up two college students who sexually assaulted family friend Amerigo Bonasera's daughter, and to send Hagen to Hollywood to persuade movie mogul Jack Woltz to cast Fontane in his latest movie. When Woltz refuses, he wakes up to find the severed head of his prize race horse, Khartoum, in his bed; it is implied that Vito ordered the horse killed.


title: Vito Corleone

text: Soon afterward, heroin kingpin Virgil Sollozzo asks Vito to invest in his operation. Sollozzo is backed by the rival Tattaglia family, and wants Vito's political influence and legal protection. Vito declines, believing the politicians and judges on his payroll would turn against him if he engaged in drug trafficking. During the meeting, Sonny expresses interest in the deal; after the meeting, Vito chastens his son for letting an outsider know what he was thinking. Shortly afterward, as Vito goes to buy oranges from a fruit stand, Sollozzo's hitmen emerge with guns drawn. Vito runs for his Cadillac, but is shot five times. Fredo, who had been accompanying Vito, drops his gun and is unable to return fire as the assassins escape. (The murder of Frank Scalice inspired the assassination attempt on Vito.)


title: Vito Corleone

text: Vito survives, however, so Sollozzo makes a second assassination attempt at the hospital. Mark McCluskey—a corrupt police captain on Sollozzo's payroll—has removed Vito's bodyguards, leaving him unprotected. However, Michael arrives moments before the imminent attack. Realizing his father is in danger, Michael has Vito moved to another room, and affirms his loyalty at Vito's bedside.


title: Vito Corleone

text: While Vito recovers, Sonny serves as acting head of the family. Michael, knowing his father will never be safe while Sollozzo lives, convinces Sonny to let him murder Sollozzo and McCluskey. Michael lures both men to a meeting at a restaurant in The Bronx, retrieves a handgun planted by Clemenza in the bathroom, and shoots both men dead. Michael is then smuggled to Sicily under the protection of Vito's friend and business partner Don Tommasino. The deaths of Sollozzo and McCluskey ignite a war between the Corleone and Tattaglia families, with the other New York families backing the latter. After Sonny is killed by Barzini's men, Vito resumes control and brokers a peace accord among the families, during which he realizes that Barzini masterminded the attempt on his life and Sonny's murder.