Ulrich, Mabel S. (1876–1945)

Mabel Simis Ulrich was a public health educator, physician, author, and public figure whose pioneering work in sex education propelled her onto multiple public health commissions in Minneapolis. She contributed to the cultural scene in Minneapolis through a bookstore that she owned, and headed the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) in Minnesota under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s.

Ulrich was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 2, 1876, to Adolph Simis, Jr., and Emma Van Duzen Simis. One of four children, Mabel attended Cornell University as a young adult, where she graduated with a degree in science in 1897. She then earned her MD in 1901 at Johns Hopkins University. On August 26, 1901, she married Dr. Harry Ulrich. They moved to Minneapolis and opened a joint medical practice.

Ulrich became invested in expanding sex education for women after working as a physician in Minneapolis for more than a decade. Many women—especially young women and brides—came to her with basic questions about their bodies, reproduction, and sex. She consulted with teachers at the University of Minnesota and presented special lectures on sex education for young women at the college. In 1914, she was appointed by the YWCA as a traveling lecturer for sex education. Ulrich spoke at high schools and colleges across the nation, teaching “the fundamental facts of life,” as the YWCA termed it.

In 1918, Ulrich expanded her work as a sex educator by writing informational pamphlets for the Board of Public Health in Minneapolis. As part of a national campaign to reduce cases of venereal disease during World War I, enlisted men received in-depth education through films, posters, and pamphlets. At the time, however, sex education for women was vague and euphemistic. Ulrich’s pamphlets, “The Girl’s Part” and “Mothers of America,” used anatomically correct terms and employed direct language, making them unique for the time. Ulrich framed sex education for women as a “supremely patriotic service,” emphasizing that the health of America’s youth was paramount to the success of the war and to the survival of humanity.

While Ulrich’s work in women’s education was groundbreaking, her teaching reflected a strong belief in eugenics. She argued that including eugenics in a sex education curriculum in high schools would prompt young men and women to consider marriage and procreation more seriously. Her ultimate goal was to “improve” the genetic pool of the population. Ulrich disagreed with the more extreme practices that some contemporary eugenists suggested, such as the forced sterilization of criminals.

Ulrich’s contributions to public health education prompted the mayor of Minneapolis to recommend her to the city’s vice commission in 1915, and to the Minneapolis Board of Welfare in 1920. Ulrich served on the board for several years, though her involvement was controversial. During her time on the board, Ulrich helped decrease spending and improved reporting methods for communicable diseases in Minneapolis.

In 1921, Ulrich opened a bookshop on Twelfth Street in Minneapolis. The first of several bookshops that she eventually owned (including one in Duluth and another in Rochester), the store contributed to the growth of Minneapolis’s cultural scene. Ulrich hosted not only local authors, but also several internationally known literary icons, such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Richard Halliburton, William Beebe, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, and Hugh Walpole. Her bookstore also carried rare prints, including some early works of Pablo Picasso.

In 1935 Ulrich’s involvement in Minneapolis’s literary scene paved the way for her to accept a position with the WPA as the head of the Minnesota chapter of the FWP. Ulrich was given ten days in which to find and hire 250 writers, and she interviewed newspaper reporters, lawyers, preachers, physicians, and even a vaudeville skit author. She found it difficult to find qualified candidates and ultimately hired only 120 employees. Her team was tasked with writing a state guide book for Minnesota.

Ulrich did not always agree with the editorial notes she received from the federal team, believing they wanted to romanticize Minnesotan culture. She also felt that politics increasingly influenced the work of the WPA on the federal level as it got more involved with the Workers’ Alliance, a union for WPA employees. Between friction with the federal offices and disagreements with unionized workers, Ulrich felt she could no longer effectively do her job with the FWP and resigned in 1937.

Although Ulrich stepped away from the WPA, she was still active in the literary world. She continued to work in her bookshop until 1945, when she died in an accidental fall from a cliff near her summer cottage at Marine on St. Croix.