J. Marion Sims Statue Should Stay Out Of Sight, Petition Says

BROOKLYN, NY — J. Marion Sims no longer holds court at Central Park, but some Brooklyn residents want him gone for good. Neighbors of Green-Wood Cemetery have launched a petition demanding that a controversial statue of the torturous doctor moved there this week stay out of public view.

"There is no space for honoring white supremacy in our neighborhood," residents of neighborhoods near the storied Windsor Terrace cemetery wrote in an open letter.

The city Parks Department on Tuesday moved the bronze figure of Sims — a 19th-century gynecologist who experimented on enslaved black women — to Green-Wood from its pedastal at Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street in East Harlem.

A commission Mayor Bill de Blasio empaneled to evaluate the city's controversial landmarks recommended moving the statue in January, saying it "has come to represent a legacy of oppressive and abusive practices."

The city and the cemetery plan to mount the figure on a much smaller base near Sims' grave site and surround it with signs about his life and cruel work. The statue was put in storage until Green-Wood builds the historical display, a spokeswoman for the cemetery said.

But activists argue the "unwanted" statue would remain a "monument to Sims' racist legacy" no matter how much it's dressed up.

It's still a reminder of the centuries of medical experimentation forced on African-Americans, the activists wrote, citing a 40-year study that observed black people with syphilis in Alabama without giving them proper treatment.

"The community in Harlem fought for years to have this statue removed, and we are a group of neighbors who do not want to see it publicly displayed in our community either," the Brooklynites wrote in the petition, first reported by am New York.

Some activists have said the statue should be buried or demolished. But the city wanted to add "detail and nuance" to controverisal figures like the Sims statue rather than erase them from its history, Mayor Bill de Blasio has said.

Richard J. Moylan, Green-Wood's president, said placing the statue near Sims' grave "is not meant to glorify him." The display will include information about Sims' experiments on enslaved women in the 1840s, giving visitors more detail than his current grave marker, which only reads, "Founder of the N.Y. State Woman's Hospital."

"As a National Historic Landmark, the responsibility to preserve this history, and not to whitewash it, is something Green-Wood takes very seriously," Moylan said in a statement.

The Brooklyn residents, though, say there are "alternative ways" to educate cemetery visitors about Sims.

(Lead image: Parks Department workers remove the statue of J. Marion Sims from its pedastal at Central Park on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)