Dr. J. Marion Sims, the “father of modern gynecology,” developed groundbreaking surgical techniques and tools in the 1800s. The truth about how he discovered these medical breakthroughs is often missing. Sims experimented on enslaved black women, without anesthesia, even though it had recently become available. When working to find a cure for the vesico-vaginal fistula, he operated on seventeen-year old Anarcha thirty times without anesthesia. She had just given birth to her first child. Sims stated in his auto-biography, “there was never a time that I could not, at any day, have had a subject for operation.” He described that period in his life as his “most memorable.”

The medical community has celebrated and honored Sims, yet many books fail to mention the torture he forced upon enslaved black women. Many excused his behavior because he was living in a time when it was acceptable for doctors to experiment on humans. In the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Irwin H. Kaiser called Sims a “product of his era.” History is being whitewashed to this day, as conservatives are banning critical race theory from being taught in schools, and books are being edited to erase the truth, so their white students don’t feel guilt for being white. Lies continue to be taught to younger generations, and the experience of black folks are getting erased to protect the legacy of white folks who have been celebrated throughout history with no mention of the racism, misogyny, and cruelty they were responsible for.

Generations of medical students have been taught that Sims was a hero and did not learn of his torturous acts. Doctors continued to experiment on black people long after slavery ended, including the Tuskegee experiments, which started in 1932 and did not get shut down until 1972.

Sims experimented on at least ten women. We only know the names of three: Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey.

CALL TO ACTION

I created a list of thirteen books that celebrate Sims but fail to mention the truth about his torturous, inhumane acts. The goal of this project is to "correct" every book available in libraries in the United states by inserting bookmarks that contain the truth. In order to correct as many books as possible, we need your help. You can help correct history by following the three steps below, which includes printing bookmarks, finding libraries near you that have the books in need of correcting, going to your local library to insert the bookmarks into the books that fail to mention the truth about Dr. Sims, and then let us know which books you corrected so we can keep track of how many more books need to be fixed.

Michelle Hartney

CALL TO ACTION

Locate books at local library