Historical events

---

  James Marion Sims (1813-1883) is often credited as the “father of modern gynecology”, however, he built his career by performing multiple horrific and painful experiments on enslaved Black women.

He began his career after interning with a doctor, taking a three-month course and studying for a year at Jefferson Medical College.

Sims began his practice in Lancaster but relocated to Montgomery, Alabama, after the death of his first two patients.

In Montgomery Sims built a reputation among white plantation owners by treating their enslaved workers to make them fit to work again.

Sims began experimenting in 1845 with surgical techniques to treat vesicovaginal fistulas, a complication of childbirth in which a hole develops between a woman's bladder and her vagina and leads to uncontrollable urinary incontinence. He experimented on female slaves, taking ownership of the women until their treatment was completed. He wrote in his autobiography about the advantages he found in working on people that were essentially his property: “There was never a time that I could not, at any day, have had a subject for operation.”

Today, we know the names of only three of the female fistula patients from Sims’s records—Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsey. It is estimated that Sims operated on 14 female slaves in total. The first one he operated on was 18-year-old Lucy, who had given birth a few months prior and hadn’t been able to control her bladder since. During the procedure, she was completely naked and made to perch on her knees, bending forward onto her elbows. Lucy endured an hour-long surgery with no anesthesia, screaming and crying out in pain, as nearly a dozen other doctors watched. As Sims later wrote, “Lucy’s agony was extreme.” She also became extremely ill due to his use of a sponge to drain the urine away from the bladder, contracting blood poisoning. “I thought she was going to die… It took Lucy two or three months to recover entirely from the effects of the operation,” he wrote. The operation failed to repair the fistulas.

Betsy was next. Like Lucy, Betsy was naked on the operating table and not given any anesthesia. This time, Sims used a device he invented for her bladder, and Betsy did not experience the same post-surgical infection that Lucy suffered. But Betsy’s injury was not repaired and this operation was also a failure.

Then came Anarcha. Anarcha was a 17-year-old enslaved woman who had had a very traumatic labor and delivery. He performed 29 operations on Anarcha, but these were also failures.

Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy were left in Sims’s control, because without a cure, they were considered useless to their enslavers. They worked for the Sims family in the periods between their procedures and recovery.

He trained Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy to assist during operations and care for each other during their recoveries. The women had no choice but to continue cooperating with Sims. In time, they became skilled medical practitioners in their own right.

In 1849, Sims performed Anarcha’s 30th operation. This time, Anarcha’s injury healed and she made a full recovery. Sims closed his hospital and moved north. Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy were all sent back to their enslavers after suffering five years of experimentation.

In 1852, Sims published an article about his new procedure. He never mentioned that the women he operated on were enslaved or that he had total control over their bodies. He also never mentioned that the enslaved women became skilled medical practitioners. In the illustrations in his article, he is shown operating on white women (shown covered) with the help of a white nurse. 

Now that he had perfected his method, he began to practice on white women using anesthesia. In New York he opened the first-ever Woman’s Hospital, where he continued testing medical treatments on his patients. When any of Sims’s patients died, he claimed the blame lay squarely with “the sloth and ignorance of their mothers and the Black midwives who attended them.”

Before his experiments on women, he also tested surgical treatments on enslaved Black infants with neonatal tetanus, a severe and often fatal infection that occurs within the first few weeks of life, with little to no success. 

A statue of Sims erected in New York in 1894 remained until January 2018, when finally, in response to criticism regarding Sims history and methods, it was relocated to Sims’ gravesite.

There are still many in the medical community that hold that Sims made significant contributions to medicine and that the women were willing participants. When the American Urogynecologic Society finally changed the name of their keynote lecture from The J. Marion Sims Lecture on November 11, 2017, they said, “His contributions to women’s health were many; that much is beyond dispute. Sims cannot and should not be held responsible for the institution of slavery itself. But the reality is that there is much we cannot know, and the dynamics of power cannot be separated from the story.

The J. Marion Sims lecture served this society well for many years, we were no longer unified in our views, and it now serves primarily as a source of polarization, pain, and disenfranchisement.” 

The Seneca Falls women’s rights convention is held in New York July 19-20, 1848, with 300 attendees. Organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Sixty-eight women and 32 men (including Frederick Douglass) sign the Declaration of Sentiments. 

 Key Callouts from the Declaration of Sentiments

"...Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective  franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of  legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides....

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns....

In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise  obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her  master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to  administer chastisement....

... the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of  the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands...

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from  those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty  remuneration.

He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction,  which he considers most honorable to himself. ..

He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a  different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies  which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of  little account in man...

He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her  confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make  her willing to lead a dependent and abject life."

  The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime, is proclaimed on December 18, 1865. 

The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18.

The 19th amendment was passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920.

The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to  vote. 

The amendment was first introduced in 1878.

Women's suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience starting in the mid-19th century. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.

They used a variety of tactics to achieve their goal such as getting states to pass suffrage acts (nine western states adopted woman suffrage legislation by 1912).  

Others challenged male-only voting laws in the courts. They also picketed, held silent vigils and hunger strikes. Often they were heckled, jailed, and physically abused.

Many women still remained unable to vote long into the 20th century because of discriminatory state voting laws. 

On June 14, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill to insert the phrase "Under God" into the United States Pledge of Allegiance.

Previously the pledge, which was written in 1892, had no reference to religion or God. 

In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower made "In God We Trust" the official motto of the United States.

This did not appear on any currency, paper or coins, prior to the 1950's.

 On May 9, 1960, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first commercially produced birth control pill in the world. 

Margaret Sanger initially commissioned “the pill” with funding from heiress Katherine McCormick. 

On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, prohibiting sex-based wage discrimination between men and women performing the same job in the same workplace. 

The Equal Pay Act was first introduced by U.S. Congress in 1945. The measure failed to pass.

By 1960, women still earned less than two-thirds of what their male counterparts were paid.

Esther Peterson, head of the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor and former First Lady Eleanor Roosvelt, chair of Kennedy’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. State Representatives Katharine St. George and Edith Green also helped push for a bill in Congress.

The bill was opposed by the Chamber of Commerce and the Retail Merchandise Association. 

 On June 30, 1966, Betty Friedan helped to found the National Organization for Women (NOW). A portion of their original statement of purpose is as follows:

"We, men and women who hereby constitute ourselves as the National Organization for Women, believe that the time has come for a new movement toward true equality for all women in America, and toward a fully equal partnership of the sexes, as part of the world-wide revolution of human rights now taking place within and beyond our national borders.

The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men. "

 In January 1969, the People's Free Food Program also known as the Free Breakfast for School Children Program was started as a community service program by the Black Panthers.

The program began at Father Earl A. Neil's St. Augustine's Episcopal Church in West Oakland, California and spread throughout the nation.

By the end of the year, they had fed 20,000 children across the United States. 

Women gained the right to open credit cards in their own names in 1974 when President Gerald Ford signed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) into law. The ECOA made it illegal for lenders to discriminate against women when applying for credit.      

Before the ECOA   

• Banks often required women to have a male cosigner to get a credit card 
• Banks sometimes discounted women's wages by up to 50% when calculating credit card limits 
• Women were often asked personal questions about their marital status 

In 1976, Congress added protections against discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, or receipt of public assistance

On Jan. 22, 1973, in its landmark 7-2 Roe v. Wade decision, the United States Supreme Court declared that the Constitution protects a woman’s legal right to an abortion.

The Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution provided a fundamental "right to privacy", which protects a pregnant woman's right to an abortion. It also held that the right to abortion is not absolute and must be balanced against the government's interests in protecting women's health and prenatal life.

 During the first trimester, the Court ruled that a state government could not restrict a woman's choice to abort pregnancies other than imposing minimal medical safeguards, such as requiring abortions to be performed by licensed physicians. 

From the second trimester on, the Court ruled that medical regulations could be placed on abortion procedures so long as they were reasonable and "narrowly tailored" to protecting mothers' health.

 From the beginning of the third trimester on—the Court ruled that a state could legally prohibit all abortions except where necessary to protect the mother's life or health. 

The Stonewall Rebellion was a series of demonstrations against a police raid that started in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City.

 Stonewall was raided on average once a month leading up to the raid on  June 28, 1969, and had been raided  once already that week. 

 While it is often referred to as the "Stonewall Riots",  Stonewall veterans prefer the term  Stonewall uprising or rebellion. The reference to riots  was used by police to justify their use of force.  

There were a number of uprisings in the years before Stonewall. These have not received as attention as Stonewall, but are just as central to United States LGBTQIA+ history. 

Some of the pre-Stonewall uprisings included: 

• Pepper Hill Club Raid, Baltimore, Maryland in 1955. Over 162 people arrested.
• Hazel's (Hazel's Inn), Sharp Park, California February 1956
• Coopers Do-Nut Raid, Los Angeles, California, 1959
• Black Nite Brawl, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 5, 1961
• Dewey’s Lunch Counter Sit-In, Philadelphia, 1965
• Compton's Cafeteria Raid, San Francisco, California, 1966
• Black Cat Raid, Los Angeles, California, 1967

The Stonewall Rebellion marked a new beginning for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. 

 On July 7, 1981, Sandra Day O'Connor was sworn in by President Ronald Reagan as the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. She served for 24 years, retiring in 2006.

On June 4, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision. 

 Project 2025 (also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project) is a political initiative to reshape the federal government of the United States and remove check on executive power in favor of right-wing policies. 

The plan was published in April 2023 by the American conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation in anticipation of Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election.