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).[8] The clinic caused an immediate sensation in the press, getting national attention, and all three women were arrested and tried for "distributing obscene materials".