Michelle Browder to build museum, clinic on site where experiments were done on enslaved women

The historic building located at 33 S. Perry St. in downtown Montgomery, Alabama once served as a space where medical experiments were conducted on female slaves. Now the site is set to undergo a multimillion dollar transformation that will ultimately provide reproductive healthcare for Black women and others. 

Artist and activist Michelle Browder purchased the two-story building that 19th-century physician Dr. J. Marion Sims used for his medical experiments on Black enslaved women, PEOPLE reports.

Browder’s acquired the building in response to a 1952 painting of Sims that depicts Sims — considered the “Father of Gynecology” — and two white men in suits studying a young Black girl on an exam table while two other Black girls observe nearby. Browder was an 18-year-old art student in Atlanta when she first came across the painting and she was moved to learn more about long-forgotten girls in the portrait. 

“They were girls, just a year maybe younger than me at the time,” said Browder, 51, of the three women, PEOPLE reports. “The look on their faces, I was troubled so bad.”

Browder later learned that the women were named Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey, whom she dubbed the “Mothers of Gynecology.” 

“It was a crime against humanity,” the Alabama native said of Sims’ experiments on vulnerable patients. “Often these girls would have to hold each other down. Lucy had 12 surgeries and it nearly killed her — there are reports of her screaming in pain.”

Sims, who believed Black people were impervious to pain, performed invasive surgeries without using anesthesia. This mindset is still held by many modern medical students, according to recent studies.

Meanwhile, Sims is celebrated as a pioneer in the medical industry for his contributions such as the development of the Sims vaginal speculum, a medical tool still used during certain gynecological surgeries and procedures. 

Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey served as the inspiration for Browder’s Mothers of Gynecology Monument, which opened this past Mother’s Day in a historically Black neighborhood in Montgomery. The exhibit is seemingly her response to the statue of Sims that still stands in front of the state capitol building. In 2018, a Sims monument was removed from Central Park in New York City.

The Mothers of Gynecology Monument features three sculptures representing Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey. Browder worked on the project with San Francisco-based artist Dana Albany. 

“When I’d see that statue of Sims, I was infuriated,” said Browder. “How can this one person be elevated and amplified and heralded as the father of modern gynecology but there’s no mention of these enslaved women, girls that were raped and trafficked? I said, ‘I’m going to change that. I’m going to erect a monument’.”

The three young women were handed over to Sims by their plantation owners after traumatic childbirths left each unable to bear more children. 

“J. Marion Sims represents so much more than just a medical practitioner that believed that Black folks had a high tolerance for pain, but he also represents systemic racism, whether it’s in health care, whether it’s in government,” said Browder, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.

Browder’s ongoing tribute to Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey will come full circle next year when she breaks ground on Sims’ old building to construct the $5.5 million Mothers of Gynecology Health and Wellness Clinic, according to PEOPLE. The space will boast a museum honoring the mothers, training center for doulas and midwives as well as women’s healthcare.

“It’s a museum that teaches the history of gynecology but also has a primary care unit upstairs where medical students from around this country can come,” Browder told the Advertiser. “If there are some uninsured women that need support, we’re going to be able to give them that.”

Browder purchased the building earlier this year, thanks in part to her nonprofit’s fundraising efforts. She expects to break ground on Mother’s Day 2023.

She also plans to hang her new mural in the clinic. It depicts a naked Sims on an exam table surrounded by modern, empowered versions of Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey.

“We needed to flip the script, put him in our shoes and see how it feels,” Browder said, PEOPLE reported.

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