On an October day in 1916, in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, women, men, and children were lined up all the way down Amboy Street outside an unassuming storefront, waiting to break the law.

“Feminism” had just entered the American political vocabulary, as had the term “birth control.” Federal law made it illegal to mail, transport, or circulate contraceptive devices or information about contraception and women’s reproductive health. The women of Brownsville, a largely working-class, largely immigrant Jewish, Yiddish-speaking tenement neighborhood — known in these years for its leftist politics and orthodox communities — had petitioned for the clinic to open.

The building’s Jewish landlord supported the project, renovating 46 Amboy Street and “adding touches here and there to make the two shiny and spotless rooms even more snow-white.” Hundreds more heard of the clinic’s opening from thousands of flyers advertising in Yiddish, Italian, and English.