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White Supremacy and Gynecology? We've Got a Statue for That!

8/18/2017

 
As the complex dialogue about the place of "Confederate" monuments in our communities lurches forward, I wanted to take a minute to point out that, no matter where you may be or what guy-on-a-horse may be in your park, South Carolina's State House pantheon of white supremacist monuments probably blows yours away.

If you think I'm proud of this, you haven't been paying attention.

The argument that "monuments are history" rings hollow to me for a number of reasons that I won't go into here. Ironically, however, I'm finding that I actually am learning -- indirectly -- about the history of the state through the statues of the individuals that are honored on the State House grounds. While the monuments themselves provide nothing but names and platitudes, primary documents and scholarly historical analysis abound for those who want to understand context and meaning.

This week I learned a bit about James Marion Sims (1813-1883), the "father of modern gynecology." A monument to Sims sits at the northwest corner of the State House grounds. ​
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Monument to James Marion Sims on the grounds of the South Carolina State House (photo by Billy Hathorn, Wikipedia).
The inscription on the left side of the monument reads:

"The first surgeon of the ages in ministry to women, treating alike empress and slave."

Apparently "treating alike" means "treating both" rather than "treating the same." The controversy about Sims revolves around his use of enslaved women and children as subjects for the experimental surgeries that made him famous. According to critics, he neither used anesthesia during his surgeries on black women, nor did he obtain their consent (but see this paper for a counter view). I invite you to watch this short video by Columbia resident Wendy Brinker, whom I just met online a few days ago in a discussion about removing the statue of Benjamin Tillman. 
While Sims does have vocal defenders (especially in the medical community, and there is a statue of him in Central Park), those in our local area who would like to see the Sims monument removed from the State House grounds are numerous and include Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin.  There is an extensive recent medical/ethical literature on Sims (e.g., here, here, here) that I have only just begun to look at. 

In my opinion, the core issue of the controversy about Sims -- the use of powerless women as research subjects -- can't be disentangled from the white supremacist society in which he operated. What does the Sims monument mean in that context? This is what we have to wrestle with. 
Greg Little
8/18/2017 03:07:22 pm

Here in Memphis we have you at least tied. We have a grand and huge bronze statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest sitting atop a horse in a park next to the University of Tennessee Medical School. We also have a huge statue of Jefferson Davis on the Mississippi Riverfront in a park. We have streets named Nathan, and Bedford, and Forrest and Jefferson and Davis. Plus we have a lot more Confederate statues in several cemeteries--dozens with several buried Generals from the Civil War. But we also have a couple bronze statues of Elvis. Not that it helps.

Andy White
8/18/2017 03:37:34 pm

I think what's most jarring about the SC situation is the density on the State House grounds (i.e. the seat of power). Like the writer in the video says, it's like a white supremacist theme park. Tillman, Sims, Strom Thurmond, Wade Hampton: these guys were involved in creating, exploiting, and perpetuating white supremacy in numerous ways. It's stunning.

Greg Little
8/18/2017 04:12:28 pm

Visit Bowling Green, Kentucky. It's amazing as far as Confederate stuff goes. Statues everywhere. The Jefferson Davis Memorial is not far away. It's the second tallest obelisk in the world. It is massive and imposing. The plaque at it quotes Davis: "The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future-a future full of golden promise... let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feelings..." 1888. I'm from Pennsylvania and had ancestors in the Union. I moved to Memphis just after Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Graham
8/18/2017 07:36:39 pm

I think the sad part is it's probably not going to stop with those statues, Snopes covered a set of memes being spread around quoting some of Abraham Lincoln's more dubious remarks about race, how soon before those remarks are used in calls to remove statues of Lincoln, even though his views changed from when he made them.

http://www.snopes.com/did-lincoln-racism-equality-oppose/

Jasper
8/18/2017 11:29:28 pm

I think one way to solve this would be to look at countries like Germany. They have both their Nazi and their DDR past, which have left monuments all our the country, and yet you do not see the monuments standing all over.
Some places have been repurposed, and other items have been moved to museums (Topographie des Terrors, Check Point Charlie e.g.) - and this is where I think statues like these should go: Museums dedicated to the history of slavery and racism depicting how different decades treated people. The statues are symbols or statements about slavery and racism, and if they are not put into a proper context as in a museum, they can become rallying points for white supremacists and others, as they can unhindered (if it was not for counter protesters) restate the racist statement of the statue.

Bob Jase
8/19/2017 06:16:05 am

nuff said

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