Fania Esiah Mindell (December 15, 1894July 18, 1969) was an American feminist, activist, and theater artist.
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Life and career
Mindell was born in Minsk, Russia on December 15, 1894. She emigrated to Brooklyn, New York in 1906 with her parents and family, and became a US citizen in 1919. She was an accomplished artist, and became a set and costume designer for Broadway theaters in New York. She translated dramatic materials from Russian to English including her version of
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...
's play, "Night Lodging", which was performed at the Plymouth Theater in 1920.
Edward G. Robinson was among the performers. Fania was also the proprietor of Little Russia, a small boutique in
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
, just off Washington Square which featured curios from Russia, but her true passion was for feminist and progressive causes.
As a young political activist in 1916 she met the now famous feminist
Margaret Sanger and her sister
Ethel Byrne. Together, the three women opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in Brooklyn known as the "Brownsville Clinic" (after the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in which it was located). The clinic caused an immediate sensation in the press, getting national attention, and all three women were arrested and tried for "distributing obscene materials".
"The police monitored the Clinic from its opening and sent in a female undercover agent to purchase contraceptive supplies. On October 26 (1916) an undercover police woman and vice-squad officers raided the clinic, confiscated an assortment of contraceptives from
pessaries
A pessary is a prosthetic device inserted into the vagina for structural and pharmaceutical purposes. It is most commonly used to treat Stress incontinence, stress urinary incontinence to stop urinary leakage and to treat pelvic organ prolapse to ...
to
condoms
A condom is a sheath-shaped barrier device used during sexual intercourse to reduce the probability of pregnancy or a sexually transmitted infection (STI). There are both male and female condoms. With proper use—and use at every act of inte ...
, along with 20 'books on young women', and arrested Sanger, Byrne and Mindell. After being arraigned, Sanger and Mindell spent the night in the Raymond Street jail, Byrne at the Liberty Avenue station. All were released the next morning on $500.00 bail."
All three women were found guilty, but eventually the verdicts were overturned, and their campaign was ultimately successful, leading to major changes in social policy and to the laws governing birth control and sex education around the world. The clinic closed but later became the basis for what was to become known as
Planned Parenthood.
On December 3, 1929 Fania married
Ralph Edmund LeClercq Roeder, a scholar, historian, and author who shared her interest in drama and theater, and in leftist causes. The couple traveled extensively- in Europe, the Caribbean, and Haiti in the 1930s- but seem to have fallen in love with Mexico by the 1940s. Fania's brother, Jacob "Pop" Mindel, a dentist by profession, was a
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
member who was later prosecuted and jailed under the
Smith Act
The Alien Registration Act, popularly known as the Smith Act, 76th United States Congress, 3d session, ch. 439, , is a United States federal statute that was enacted on June 28, 1940. It set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of th ...
. Her brother's views and her association with leftist causes may have influenced the Roeder's decision to move to Mexico by the 1950s when
McCarthyism was prevalent in the United States. During this period many political activists, artists and intellectuals from the United States sought refuge in Mexico. Fania and her husband spent much of their later lives there as expatriates in Mexico City where Ralph studied and authored a number of books including a seminal biography of
Benito Juárez
Benito Pablo Juárez García (; 21 March 1806 – 18 July 1872) was a Mexican liberal politician and lawyer who served as the 26th president of Mexico from 1858 until his death in office in 1872. As a Zapotec, he was the first indigenous pre ...
for which he was honored with Mexico's highest literary award, the
Orden del Águila Azteca
The Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle ( es, Orden Mexicana del Águila Azteca) forms part of the Mexican Honours System and is the highest Mexican order awarded to foreigners in the country.
History
It was created by decree on December 29, 19 ...
.
[New York Times Obituary: February 21, 1970.]
Fania and her husband both died in Mexico City in 1969Fania in July and her husband in October. Both are buried there in the city's ''
Panteón de Dolores
The Panteón Civil de Dolores is the largest cemetery in Mexico and contains the "Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres" ( en, Rotunda of Illustrious Persons). It is located on Constituyentes Avenue in the Miguel Hidalgo borough of Mexico City, between ...
''.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mindell, Fania
20th-century translators
20th-century American women writers
1894 births
1969 deaths
American birth control activists
American Jews
American translators
American women's rights activists
People from Greenwich Village
People associated with Planned Parenthood
Sex educators
American socialist feminists
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States