The statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims has been removed from New York City’s Central Park, CBS New York reports.
Dr. Sims is often regarded as the “father of modern gynecology,” but is a controversial figure due to the unethical medical experiments he performed on enslaved African-American women, which included surgical procedures on the women without the use of anesthesia.
The decision was made by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio after input from the city’s Monument Commission.
“We are just excited by the decision of the commission and also by the decision of the mayor,” commission member John Calvelli said in January, according to CBS New York.
De Blasio said that he thinks that relocating the monument to the Brooklyn cemetery is a “fair” compromise.
The statue of Sims has been in Central Park for 84 years and will be located at the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where Sims is buried.
CBS New York also reported that while the mayor was waiting to make his decision on the Sims statue, the statues of both Theodore Roosevelt and Christopher Columbus were defaced.
The Sims statue was the site of a large protest against white supremacy in August of 2017.