A worker tosses a strap over the 19th-century statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, in New York’s Central Park. The statue is being moved to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where Sims is buried. Image: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
NEW YORK (AP) — A bronze statue of a 19th-century doctor who did experimental surgery without anesthesia on enslaved African-American women was removed from Central Park on Tuesday.
New York City’s Public Design Commission voted Monday to accept a mayoral panel’s recommendation to remove the statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims for relocation to Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, where Sims is buried, accompanied by signage with historical context.
Dr. Bernadith Russell, a gynecologist, emotionally embraced a friend as they watched the statue being removed.
Dr. Bernadith Russell hugs a friend as the statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims, is removed from New York’s Central Park, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Sims was known as the father of modern gynecology, but critics say his use of enslaved African-American women as experimental subjects was unethical. Russell, a gynecologist, said at the time she was in medical school, “He was held up as the father of gynecology with no acknowledgment of the enslaved women he experimented on.” Image: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Russell said that when she was in medical school, Sims “was held up as the father of gynecology with no acknowledgement of the enslaved women he experimented on.”
The commission’s president, Signe Nielsen, wept on Monday when she called for the vote, The New York Times reported.
The names of many black women on whom Sims operated are unknown. Three of the names he recorded were Anarcha, Betsy and Lucy.
“I’m not a woman of color, but I am deeply moved by what we heard today,” said Nielsen.
Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio called for a review of “symbols of hate” on city property eight months ago following a white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August that left a person dead. The issue of possibly removing Confederate monuments initially prompted the white nationalists to gather.
Amrit Trewn, an activist who had advocated for demolition, said the decision to relocate the statue means “that this physical representation of anti-black violence will still stand and maintain its presence in the heart of yet another community of color.”
Michele Bogart, a former member of the design commission and an art history professor, had urged that the statue remain in Central Park, saying: “History matters… Don’t run from it.” NVG
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