Opening Reception at Harvard’s Countway Library

Curator: Yasmina Kamal

Curatorial Statement

The Resilient Sisterhood Project (RSP) proudly presents Call and Response: A Narrative of Reverence to Our Foremothers in Gynecology. Guided by the Sankofa principle of looking to the past to understand the present, this art exhibition raises public awareness about the exploitation of enslaved Black women’s bodies in the founding of modern gynecology as a medical specialty in the United States.

Long lauded as the “father of modern gynecology,” Dr. James Marion Sims conducted inhumane experiments on nearly a dozen enslaved Black women and girls during the 1840s in Montgomery, Alabama. He only spoke and wrote about three of them—Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy. Dr. Sims performed at least 30 surgeries without anesthesia on Anarcha alone.

Call and Response is a narrative arc. It begins with the poignant portrayals of Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy, as well as other ancestors. What follows is a condemnation of the complicit roles played by many doctors in upholding the institution of slavery instead of their medical oath. The past and present blend together as the narrative moves into the stories of Black women across generations who became trailblazers in the very fields that viewed them as mere objects of experimentation. While we cannot change history, the exhibited works are part of our call to unearth the past, examine the present, and shape the future of Black women’s reproductive health and rights.

Painting by Jules Arthur