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Viverito Leads Charge To Have Statue Of Dr. J Marion Sims Removed From Central Park

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Protestors led by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito, called on the city to remove a Central Park statue dedicated to Dr. J Marion Sims.

As 1010 WINS' Glenn Schuck reported, the bronze and granite monument along Fifth Avenue was dedicated in 1894, a decade after Sims' death.

Sims was a surgeon, widely regarded as the father of modern gynecology. Protestors said he widely experimented on slave women.

Those gathered Monday, want the statue taken down.

"J Marion Sims is a painful symbol of our nation's troubling relationship with race, and with our country's insufficient efforts to right the wrongs of longstanding injustices, of the entranced racism we much vigilantly work to uproot," she said.

"One way or another, you can be sure it will be coming down," said New York City Councilman Bill Perkins (D-9th).

So far, the Parks Department has said the statue will stay. Viverito said if that's the case, a plaque should be installed to explain what she called the racist practices of Dr. Sims.

As WCBS 880's Alex Silverman reported, the Mayor's office is still putting together a panel of experts who will determine the criteria for what monuments will come down, though the city has already decided a granite marker with the name of a Nazi collaborator will be stripped from Lower Broadway.

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