The racist and misogynistic origins of gynecology in the United States are well documented. But this legacy is at risk of erasure. 

In March 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order decreeing that museums stop “rewriting history” by promoting “divisive, race-centered ideology.” Trump specifically criticized the Smithsonian Institution for portraying “American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”

Then, in August, the president wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Dr. Lonnie G. Bunch III, calling for a “comprehensive review” of eight of its 21 museums. NPR reported at the time that the process would include a thorough analysis of the organization’s exhibition texts, social media content, curatorial process, and exhibition planning. 

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. was on the list of facilities designated for scrutiny. One of its digital exhibits, “To Be a Woman,” features the notorious gynecologist James Marion Sims, who used enslaved Black women as guinea pigs for his medical innovations. 

Between 1845 and 1849, Sims performed nonconsensual, painful surgeries on at least three such women later identified by historians—though there are likely up to a dozen more cases.  

The Smithsonian Institution, which was closed during the 45-day federal government shutdown in October and November of 2025, has not responded to multiple requests for comment about whether it is under pressure to shutter or alter its Sims exhibits. 

But Black activists and historians are worried. In interviews with Rewire News Group, they expressed that this history, whose echoes are still visible in medicine today, must be remembered—so they’re telling it. 

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Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens documented an extensive history of racist medical experiments in her 2017 Book Medical Bondage. 

Cooper Owens told RNG she is “concerned” about the sanitation of history under the Trump administration. 

“For a political agenda to be attached to the ways we understand the past really undercuts a lot of the work historians have done,” she said.

That work includes the documentation of decades of medical abuse and exploitation that enslaved people endured under the guise of scientific advancement. 

In 1807, the importation of enslaved people into the United States was outlawed. As a result, existing enslaved people became more valuable to their enslavers, as did their offspring. This situation intensified slave owners’

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