Call and Response: A Narrative of Reverence to Our Foremothers in Gynecology
Countway Library is thrilled to announce our newest exhibit, on loan from the Resilient Sisterhood Project!
Exhibit Dates: October 25, 2025-January 21, 2026
Please join us for the opening reception of this powerful exhibition on Saturday, October 25.
Curatorial Statement

Jules Arthur, 2019
Mixed Media
Property of Resilient Sisterhood Project
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.
In 2010, Lilly Marcelin, Founder and Executive Director of RSP, first learned about the plight of these women and girls while listening to a lecture on Dr. James Marion Sims. She was distraught and wondered why such important history is not widely taught. Many days later, unable to shake the spectrum of emotions stemming from what she learned, Lilly felt a call to action. This was the genesis of Call and Response. In 2017, Lilly was introduced to African American artist Jules Arthur. Because Jules is well-known for his brilliance at capturing complex Black historical narratives, she shared the story with him. He was stunned. From there, the two worked closely to bring the story to light, culminating in this powerful exhibition.
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.
Exhibit Tours
A schedule of exhibit tours will be available on the Countway Library calendar shortly.
To request a group tour (7-20 people), please email The Resilient Sisterhood Project.
About the Resilient Sisterhood Project

Jules Arthur, 2019
Mixed Media
Property of Resilient Sisterhood Project
The Resilient Sisterhood Project (RSP), founded in 2012, is a non-profit based in Boston raising awareness and empowering women and young adults of African descent affected by diseases of the reproductive system.
RSP works in partnership with—rather than on behalf of—black women and young adults in our communities as we mobilize to address deeply-rooted racial discrimination and internalized racism, health and medical inequities, oppressive cultural and gender norms, environmental and food injustice, and other social determinants of health that perpetuate the silence, secrecy, and inaction surrounding these diseases. We make a conscious decision to bring a unique social and cultural approach to the discourse of these diseases.
Our educational programs represent a venue of support for advocacy, activism, and empowerment. We organize both structured and informal dialogue to provide a culturally sensitive safe space where women of African descent can speak freely and gain knowledge about their reproductive health.
RSP brings an expansive definition to and understanding of the word “women” to include transgender women, cisgender women, gender queer, and gender non-conforming people who have a female reproductive system.
A Call to Action
Artist Michelle Hartney, whose work is included in the “Call & Response” exhibition, urges audiences to take decisive action by pursuing their own corrective measures towards amending J. Marion Sims’s cruel legacy.
Step 1: Visit Hartney’s website:
https://www.michellehartney.com/correcting-history and download her customized bookmark which highlights Sims’s surgeries on enslaved Black women.
Step 2: View the list of medical publications that are still in circulation.
Step 3: Access a map of the United States and click on your individual state. From there you will gain access to a list of academic institutions which may carry the publications listed in Step 2.
Step 4: If you have access to these libraries, via your academic affiliation, visit these institutions and surreptitiously insert the bookmarks into the publications that mention J. Marion Sims or vesico-vaginal fistulas.
Step 5: Take a photo of your “corrected” book and share on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook to get more folks involved using the hashtags #correctinghistory #callandresponse #lucybetseyanarcha #countwaylibrary
Further Reading
We invite you to explore this list of recommended readings, compiled by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research
Books
- Black and Blue by John Hoberman
- Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts
- Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia by Todd L. Savitt
- Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination by Alondra Nelson
- Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Recreate Race in the Twenty First Century by Dorothy Roberts
- Superior: The Return of Race and Science by Angela Saini
- Is Science Racist? Debating Race by Jonathan Marks
- The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine by Keith Wailoo and Stephen Pemberton
- Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on Health in America by Linda Villarosa, 2023
- Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by Deirdre Cooper Owens, University of Georgia Press, 2018
- Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington, Anchor, 2008
- Say Anarcha: A Young Woman, A Devious Surgeon, and the Harrowing Birth of Modern Women’s Health by J.C. Hallman, Henry Holt, 2023. Visit the illustrated online archive at https://www.youtube.com/@AnarchaArchive.
- The Pain Gap, How Sexism and Racism, in Healthcare Kill Women by Anushay Hossain, S&S/Simon Element, 2021
- Henrietta Lacks, The Untold Story, by Ron Lacks, Bookbaby, 2020
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, Crown, 2011
- Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy by Susan Reverby, University of North Carolina Press, 2009
- Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison by Allen M. Hornblum, Routledge, 1999
- Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, Saidiya Hartman, Oxford University Press, 1997
- Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, Harvard University Press, 2001
- In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Christina Sharpe, Duke University Press, 2016
Documentary Films
- Remembering Anarcha directed by Josh Carples, 2021 - https://rememberinganarcha.com
- Aftershock directed by Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee, 2022 - https://www.aftershockdocumentary.com
News Articles
- Why Are Women’s Health Concerns Dismissed So Often? 1A hosted by Jenn While, NPR, January 4, 2023 - https://the1a.org/segments/why-are-womens-health-concerns-dismissed-so-often/
- Cervical Cancer Kills Black Women at a Disproportionately Higher Rate Than White Women by Alana White, NPR, January 31, 2022 - https://www.npr.org/2022/01/31/1076202786/cervical-cancer-kills-black-women-at-a-disproportionately-higher-rate-than-white
- Labor Pains: The Pain That Is Unlike All Other Pain by Stephanie H. Murray, The Atlantic, August 12, 2022 - https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/08/childbirth-pain-epidural-trade-offs/671113/