Statue of doctor who tested on slaves removed
NEW YORK: New York has removed the statue of a 19th century gynaecologist who experimented on enslaved black women without anesthesia from Central Park, as the United States increasingly confronts racism in its history.
A commission recommended in January that the statue of J. Marion Sims be relocated from Central Park to a Brooklyn cemetery, where Sims is buried, and that steps be taken to explain the legacy of a man deemed the father of modern gynaecology.
“It’s about time!” shouted an African American woman, one of around two dozen people who attended the removal on Tuesday.
“Sims is not our hero,” shouted the others.
For Bernadith Russell, a doctor at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, it is not “important to say he didn’t make contributions, but it’s important to acknowledge that these contributions came at the expense of women who weren’t able to consent”.
“I recognise his contributions, but it’s sort of if Josef Mengele had contributions to the field of medicine, we wouldn’t put up a statue of him because of how he got that information,” she said.
Mengele was a German Nazi physician who carried out experi- ments on prisoners at concentration camps during the Holocaust.
It was the only one of four statues on public land that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed to relocate following the review, as the United States debates tributes to figures whose legacies are increasingly scrutinised.
New York is keeping in place stat- ues of Christopher Columbus and former US president Theodore Roosevelt, and a plaque dedicated to Philippe Petain – a World War I hero who later collaborated with the Nazis – albeit with additional signs to provide context.
A monument to indigenous people will also be erected near the Columbus statue. Columbus, the so-called man who “discovered America”, has been denounced as embodying the genocide of indigenous Americans.
Critics complain that the Roosevelt monument is an image of racial hierarchy, depicting a triumphant Roosevelt on horseback looming over Native American and African men.