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.
Jules Arthur, 2019
Mixed Media
Property of Resilient Sisterhood Project
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.
Visit the Exhibit
Open to Harvard ID holders Monday-Friday (building hours)
Open to community members Saturday-Sunday (access policies)
Please join us for the opening reception on Saturday, October 25.
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

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, 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 vesicovaginal fistulas.
Step 5: Take a photo of your “corrected” book and share with michellehartneyart on Instagram, mmkhartney on Twitter, or Michelle Hartney on 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
- Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by Deirdre Cooper Owens
- Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
- The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism, in Healthcare Kill Women by Anushay Hossain
- Henrietta Lacks, The Untold Story by Ron Lacks
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
- Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy by Susan Reverby
- Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison by Allen M. Hornblum
- Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America by Saidiya Hartman
- Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market by Walter Johnson
- In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe
Documentary Films
- Remembering Anarcha directed by Josh Carples, 2021
- Aftershock directed by Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee, 2022
News Articles
- Why Are Women’s Health Concerns Dismissed So Often? 1A hosted by Jenn While, NPR, January 4, 2023
- Cervical Cancer Kills Black Women at a Disproportionately Higher Rate Than White Women by Alana White, NPR, January 31, 2022
- Labor Pains: The Pain That Is Unlike All Other Pain by Stephanie H. Murray, The Atlantic, August 12, 2022
Opening Ceremony Panelists
Jules Arthur
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Jules was raised with strong values and a moral sensibility that has become a wellspring source for the insights expressed in his work. With an educational background in visual arts and his studied observations of life, he is able to combine passion and tradition into visual stories of human endeavor. In 1995, he moved to New York City to attend The School of Visual Arts where he received a B.F.A. with honors in 1999. The following year, he was privileged to receive guidance from Robert Blackburn while attending the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Since then, he has been the recipient of awards and has been given a commending review in the New York Times for his “deft draftsmanship.” Committed to the path of a lifelong student of life and art, he can be found frequently in continuing course studies at the renowned Art Students League in New York City. He states, “If one is to master the human form one must remain in constant pursuit of it.”
Dr. Michele David
Dr. David is a skilled primary care clinician and public health practitioner with proven leadership experience and a commitment to improve health outcomes. Dr. David is Chief of Quality and Safety at MIT Medical. She was an Associate Professor of Medicine at the BU School of Medicine, Co-Director of the Haitian Health Institute at BMC, and Director of Community Health Programs at BU, Center of Excellence in Women’s Health. Dr. David has been the recipient of several awards including the MA Health and Human Services William A. Hinton Award in recognition of her commitment to public health, especially the improvement of health care for communities of color in 2010 and a leadership Award in 2012 from the MA DPH.
Dr. Yvonne Gomez-Carrion
Dr. Yvonne Gomez-Carrion (she/her) was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of eight, she proclaimed that she wanted to be both a physician and a priest. Nearly 6 decades, she
is a physician who has been known to preach. Many opportunities allowed her to get an excellent education at Princeton University for her undergraduate education where she majored in Psychology. As a recipient of the National Health Service Corp, she attended New York City’s Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons for medical school.
Dr. Gomez-Carrion is a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist who has been in clinical practice since 1987 as an attending at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA, after completing her residency training at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City.
Dr. Gomez-Carrion believes in a holistic approach to health care. For the past 4 decades, she has cared for patients with medical and social challenges including hypertension, diabetes, seizure disorders, autoimmune diseases, obesity, depression, domestic violence, substance abuse and homelessness. Since delivering her last baby on 2/14/2015, she has been a problem-oriented gynecologist who has expertise in managing patients with uterine fibroids, abnormal pap smears, abnormal vaginal bleeding, ovarian masses, gender dysphoria, and anxiety with pelvic exams.
In June 2023, Dr. Gomez-Carrion ended her clinical practice at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to focus on her involvement in community and medical professionals’ education, addressing health disparities, black/brown birthing individuals’ reproductive justice and humanism in medicine. In addition, she looks forward to spending more time on her own self-care by continuing her practices of meditation, exercising, writing poetry, spending more time with family/friends and showing gratitude.
Dr. Gomez-Carrion has devoted her professional life to educating patients about their bodies' functioning and resilience, and discussing their treatment options for care, which empowers them to direct their care.
Lilly Marcelin
Lilly Marcelin is a community activist and organizer who has dedicated herself to a lifelong journey around racial and social justice equity. Ms. Marcelin has worked on a broad range of issues from gender-based violence, human trafficking, health and socioeconomic disparities to women’s reproductive health and rights. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Resilient Sisterhood Project (RSP) with a mission to inform and empower women and young adults of African descent about the common diseases of the reproductive system that disproportionately affect them. Ms. Marcelin strongly prefers to work in partnership with–rather than on behalf of–black women to address deeply rooted systemic racism. Ms. Marcelin holds educational degrees from Wellesley College and Tufts University. In addition, she has been the recipient of many awards over the years with the most recent ones in 2023.
Jules Arthur
Dr. Michele David
Kenneth Green
Michelle Hartney