Tear down this statue!
Rid Central Park of slave-abusing sicko, Viv says
A CENTRAL PARK monument to a doctor who performed medical experiments on slaves should be taken down, City Council Speaker Melissa MarkViverito said Monday.
Opponents said the Parks Department should scrap the statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims — who has been hailed as the father of modern gynecology, but did operations on enslaved women without their consent or giving them anesthesia.
“We must send a definitive message that the despicable acts of James Marion Sims are repugnant and reprehensible,” MarkViverito said at a press conference near the East Harlem statue.
The protest comes as Mayor de Blasio announced plans for a 90-day review of “symbols of hate” on city property, in the aftermath of violence sparked by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., opposed to the removal of Confederate statues.
De Blasio said Monday the city would look at removing the Sims statue as part of that review.
Mark-Viverito called the doctor’s work a “stain on our nation’s history” that should not be honored.
“Under the guise of medical advancement they were probed, they were tortured and they were dehumanized,” she said.
She also said the commission should take a look at the statue of Christopher Columbus in Columbus Circle, though she stopped short of calling for its removal.
“There’s very much an ongoing dialogue and debate in the Caribbean, particularly in Puerto Rico, where I’m from, about this same conversation, that there should be no monument or statue of Christopher Columbus, based on what he means or what he signifies . . . the native population that was there when he came, oppression and everything that he brought with him,” she said.
De Blasio said the future of the Sims statue — which dates to 1892 and has been in the park since 1934 — would be a focus of his task force.
“It obviously is one of the ones that will get very immediate attention, because there’s been tremendous concern raised about it,” he told reporters in Brooklyn.
“People can come forward and point out things they have concerns about, and the task force we’ll put together in the next few days will evaluate each and every one,” he said, adding that they plan to establish “a sense of a universal standard that we can apply going forward.”
Community Board 11 Chairwoman Diane Collier called the Sims statue “just as offensive as those Confederate monuments being removed in other states.”
She suggested it could be moved to a more appropriate location like Brooklyn’s GreenWood Cemetery, where Sims is buried.
“We’ve never set out to destroy it,” she said.
We must send a definitive message that the despicible acts of James Marion Sims are repugnant and reprehensible.
Melissa Mark-Viverito