Legacy Museum 

Montgomery, Alabam

I made this proposition to the owners of the negroes: If you will give me Anarcha and Betsey for experiment, I agree to perform no experiment or operation on either of them to endanger their lives, and will not charge a cent for keeping them, but you must pay their taxes and clothe them. . . . The first patient I operated on was [Tom Zimmerman’s slave] Lucy. . . . Anarcha became the subject of [many] experiment[s]. . . . [the last of which] was the thirtieth operation [I] performed on [her]. 

— J. Marion Sims, M.D., LL.D., The Story of My Life, 1884 

Lucy, Betsey, & Anarcha,
I’ve just learned about the scalpels
you met & want your voices to harrow

these united states. I’ve met eight myself,
all under the sweet sleep of ether
withheld from you,

so the ore that cut through my
belly for cyst, hernia, & fibroid,
blockage of my bowel,

for ovary, gall bladder, & finally—
the source of so much joy
& trouble—uterus,

erased my pain
& the broken organs
I could live without.

Deftly wielded, the steel did
what it was made for.
I never gave a thought

to how your compulsory
sacrifices birthed the science
that delivered my life—

I didn’t even know,
until now, as I walk through
this exhibit & the lacquered

plaque teaches me your stories,
how gynecology & its vital
remedies came to be.

I’d only had a vague awareness
of things, raised white in an affluent
south Jersey suburb, where I was taught

about slavery & Jim Crow but nothing
about Harriet Jacobs or Sojourner
Truth, convict leasing or redlining,

or you,
told nothing about masters
bringing you to the table

to kneel, lean on your elbows, head in hands.
What did I know of such diabolical sweat
in that humid, Alabama room

while I convalesced in my parents’ Cape Cod
complete with master suite?
Now I want to rage

against the way Sims plotted his path
& slipped his fingers
into your sacred vault,

how you had to feel every slice
in your molecular core.
How you reared up, bit into cloth.

How your eyes must’ve begged
him to stop. How you
miraculously survived.

I don’t know how to handle the fact
that over a century later, I still benefit
from his calculating breath

that must have stolen yours over
& over again without mercy
or regret. I want to carve myself

out of this story but can’t.
Your truth has risen from the grave
where clover like scars

creep across the whole terrain.

First published in Whale Road Review.

Amid Interruptions, Samuel A. Cartwright Pontificates about Drapetomania to a Friend over Fine Dining, New Orleans, June, 1851 (A Persona Poem)

Ah, yes, I’m so glad you asked about that. We do share
common interests, don’t we? Probably because you & I
both know the good Lord made the Negroes

to bend their knees to us in obedience to the Word.
We, in turn, feed & clothe them, offer fuel
for their fire, & provide shelter.

The work we give them helps them feel a sense
of purpose. We cannot defy the Almighty by letting
them think more highly of themselves than they ought.

Amen? Amen. (no, no more wine. that’ll be fine, thank you.)
As I was saying, we must not encourage them to dream
about working their own fields, or, God forbid, to read & write.

When we do, I hypothesize, we inspire flights (peach pie?
how can I refuse?) of, of, yes, there’s the word, fancy
that confuse them cruelly, since they have a nature

not unlike that of a new-born infant of the white race.
So we allow them evenings with their families, yes, we do.
We push them hard, true, but they bear the rays of the sun

better than we. We whip them before they raise
their voices in protest, but only then—for that can
cure dysaesthesia aethiopica, too, & stir the skin

into the sensitivity it lacks. (right you are, good sir, my science
is sound. indeed—this is no germ theory! ha!)
Where was I? Ah, yes, so our moderation—borne of love—

casts a preventative spell. Otherwise, the impulse to wander
overruns them like miasma poisons the night air,
spreading disease everywhere. (oh, very good to see you

this balmy evening as well!) Then, then they deceive
themselves into believing liberty affords
something more than the hunger & helplessness

that’d await them. But I agree with you: the worst
of the rascals do run, afflicted as they are with this unnatural
vagabondage. So what can we do? (yes, indeed, tomorrow

& tomorrow, I will—first thing!) When the patrol returns
the fugitives to your hands, remedy the illness permanently:
cut off their big toes. That will foil their frustration!

First published in African American Review.

Notes from the Poet on the Poems

“Legacy Museum”

The American nineteenth century physician James Marion Sims is considered the father of modern gynecology. From 1846-1849 in Alabama, he conducted surgical experiments on many enslaved women, but we only know the names of three: Lucy, Betsey, and Anarcha. None were ever given anesthesia, which had been introduced at the time. Some researchers argue that Sims was distrustful of anesthesia because of its newness while others argue he also believed in the racist notion of the day, that Black people did not feel pain like white people did because their skin was believed to be tougher.

Equally unbelievable, Sims began his work believing that women did not feel as much pain in the “soft parts” of the body where he operated. Yet he did use anesthesia on his female, white patients after he moved to New York.

Sims’ experiments focused on repairing vesicovaginal fistulas, a condition that produced excruciating suffering and had no known cure. As the epigraph shows, Sims himself writes in his autobiography that he operated on Anarcha thirty times. All the slaves’ owners asked Sims for the procedures, so their slaves would once again become “sound.”  Although Sims claimed the females begged for the surgery, too, his own autobiography shows he only asked their owners for permission. Such owners were all too eager to get their slaves back to work.

“Amid Interruptions, Samuel A. Cartwright Pontificates…”

Italicized phrases in the poem come verbatim from Samuel A. Cartwright’s article, “Report on the Diseases and Pecularities of the Negro Race,” which was published in The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal in May, 1851. Cartwright argued that drapetomania was a mental illness that caused slaves to run away from their masters and that dysaesthesia aethiopica was a mental illness that caused slaves to be lazy. He first presented his report at The Medical Association of Louisiana’s annual meeting on March 10, 1851. DeBow’s Review later solicited and re-printed some of his most outrageous declarations in their magazine that same year. Cartwright’s racist pseudoscience appeared in medical encyclopedias as late as 1914, despite the fact that germ theory was well established science long before then.