Statue Of Doctor Who Experimented On Slaves Coming To Green-Wood

WINDSOR TERRACE, BROOKLYN — A statue dedicated to a 19th century doctor who experimented on women slaves is coming to Green-Wood Cemetery, the mayor’s office announced Friday, three days before the national celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday.

The monument to Dr. J. Marion Sims — the “father of modern gynecology” who did not anesthetize his subjects because he believed "black women don't feel pain” — will be moved to Brooklyn from Fifth Avenue and East 103rd Street in Manhattan months after protesters demanded it be taken down, officials said.

The Mayor’s office promised to educate the public about Sim’s history of “non-consensual medical experimentation of people of color, particularly women,” by providing plaques, commissioning artwork and partnering with a local community organization to promote dialogues.

The bronze and granite monument to Sims — who conducted 30 experimental operations without anesthesia on a 17-year-old slave named Anarcha — has stood on Fifth Avenue since 1934 as a gift from the Academy of Medicine, according to the Central Park Conservancy.

The inscription describes Sims as a "surgeon & philanthropist" who founded New York State’s Woman’s Hospital.

“His brilliant achievement carried the fame of American surgery throughout the entire world,” the inscription reads.

The Black Youth Project 100 staged a mass protest, with young women wearing hospital gowns seemingly stained red with blood, in front of the statue in August.

Days later, then-City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and City Councilman Bill Perkins — who compared Sims to Hitler — pledged their support to the protesters, according to DNAinfo.

Mayor Bill de Blasio responded with a promise to submit the Sims monument and other "symbols of hate on city property” to a 90-day review.

"That is obviously is one of the ones that will get very immediate attention,” de Blasio said in August. “There's been a tremendous concern raised about it."

The Sims statue is one of four controversial statues — including a monument to a Nazi sympathizer — whose history sparked outrage in 2017 and that the Mayor’s office promised on Friday to either move or provide more “historical context.”

“Reckoning with our collective histories is a complicated undertaking with no easy solution," de Blasio said in a statement. "Our approach will focus on adding detail and nuance to – instead of removing entirely – the representations of these histories."

His office did not immediately respond to Patch's request for more information about how Sims' statue would be contextualized in Green-Wood Cemetery.

Photo of the NYC Parks Department