Michelle Browder | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1971 |
| Notable work | Mothers of Gynecology Monument, You May Feel a Little Pressure |
| Awards | USA Today Woman of the Year, Alabama 2022 |
| Website | https://www.anarchalucybetsey.org/ |
Michelle Browder (born 1971) is an American artist and activist known for her sculptures in Montgomery, Alabama, and historical tours of the area.
Browder was born in Denver, Colorado and her family moved to Verbena, Alabama before she started school. [1] Her father, Curtis Browder was a prison chaplain, the first Black person to serve in this role in Alabama. [2] Browder's aunt is Aurelia Browder, who was arrested for sitting in the white section of a city bus and was the plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle. [3] As a child, Browder was encouraged by her father to express her anger through art and creativity, which led to her attending the Art Institute of Atlanta. [4]
Browder is known for her activism, her tours of Montgomery, Alabama, and her outdoor sculptures. [5] She founded two youth non-profit programs to help young people in Alabama: "I Am More Than" [6] and More Up Cafe. [7] She has also worked to provide homes to people in Alabama [8] During the time from 2002 to 2007, she opened a restaurant called PJR's Fish and BBQ Restaurants. [9] [10] She campaigned for Barack Obama prior to the 2008 election, [11] [12] [13] and talked about black entrepreneurs opening new businesses in 2018 on the PBS NewsHour. [14] Browder is the owner and operator of More Than Tours, a tour company which provides educational tours about racial bias and history to students and tourists in Montgomery, Alabama. [15] [16] [17] Browder announced in 2020 [18] that she was creating a monument to the mothers of gynecology, enslaved women including Anarcha Westcott, who were operated on by J. Marion Sims in the 1840s. [6] [19] She then, in March 2021, held an event in Los Angeles where she asked the public to bring discarded metal objects so they could be melted down to be formed into the monument. "Discarded objects represent how Black women have been treated in this country,” Browder said to The Los Angeles Times. “But it also represents the beauty that’s in the broken and the discarded." [6] Browder first learned of Sims while a student at the Art Institute of Atlanta. [20] [21] She said to the San Francisco Chronicle: "If you’ve ever had a pap smear, you have Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey to thank." [22]
In 2020, Browder designed a mural for Black Lives Matter that was painted near the site of Montgomery's former slave market and was featured on The TODAY show. [23] Browder's work has been featured in The New York Times as a notable representation of Montgomery's complicated past [24] and as a representation of the evolution of civil rights [17] as well as commemorating the centennial ratification of women's right to vote. [25] She was the designer and artist of #TheMarchContinues Mural at the Southern Poverty Law Center. [26] [27]
February 27, 2023 she was again featured on the PBS Newshour discussing her mothers of gynecology public art.[ citation needed ]
In May 2023, Browder announced that she has acquired the 33 South Perry street and it will be transformed into the Mothers of Gynecology Health and Wellness Museum and Clinic, providing resources to uninsured women, medical practitioners, midwives and doulas. [28]
In 2020 Browder was given the Community Hero Award by the Mayor of Montgomery, Todd Strange, for her efforts as a bridge builder in her community using art, history, and conservation. [29] Governor Kay Ivey presented Browder with the Rising Star in Tourism Award from the state of Alabama. [29]
In 2022, Browder was named as one of USA Today's Women of the Year, which recognizes women who have made a significant impact. [30]
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". Parks became a NAACP activist in 1943, participating in several high-profile civil rights campaigns. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to vacate a row of four seats in the "colored" section in favor of a White passenger, once the "White" section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, and she helped inspire the Black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year. The case became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit Browder v. Gayle resulted in a November 1956 decision that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Gynaecology or gynecology is the area of medicine that involves the treatment of women's diseases, especially those of the reproductive organs. It is often paired with the field of obstetrics, forming the combined area of obstetrics and gynecology (OB-GYN).
Claudette Colvin is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. This occurred nine months before the more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.
The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955—the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for her refusal to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when the federal ruling Browder v. Gayle took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional.
Michelle D. Douglas is a Canadian human rights activist who launched a landmark legal challenge in the Federal Court of Canada against the military's discriminatory policies against LGBTQ+ service members. Douglas herself served as an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces from 1986 to 1989. She was honourably discharged from the military in 1989 under the military's discriminating "LGBT Purge".
James Marion Sims was an American physician in the field of surgery. His most famous work was the development of a surgical technique for the repair of vesicovaginal fistula, a severe complication of obstructed childbirth. He is also remembered for inventing Sims speculum, Sims sigmoid catheter, and the Sims position. Against significant opposition, he established, in New York, the first hospital specifically for women. He was forced out of the hospital he founded because he insisted on treating cancer patients; he played a small role in the creation of the nation's first cancer hospital, which opened after his death.
Johnnie Rebecca Daniels Carr was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from 1955 until her death.
Aurelia Shines Browder Coleman was an African-American civil rights activist in Montgomery, Alabama. In April 1955, almost eight months before the arrest of Rosa Parks and a month after the arrest of Claudette Colvin, she was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white rider.
Dana King is an American broadcast journalist and sculptor. She served as an anchor for the CBS owned-and-operated station KPIX-TV in San Francisco. In 2012, King left KPIX to pursue her passion in sculpting and art. Her outdoor sculpture commemorating the Montgomery bus boycott is displayed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. King uses historically generalized and racist ideas that requires indepth researches, to provide information on the normative misrepresentation of Black peoples' emotional and physical sacrifices.
Julianna Michelle Childs, known professionally as J. Michelle Childs, is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She was a U.S. district Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina from 2010 to 2022, as well as previously a state court judge of the South Carolina Circuit Court from 2006 to 2010.
Bettina Judd is an African-American interdisciplinary writer, scholar, artist, and performer.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, informally known as the National Lynching Memorial, is a national memorial to commemorate the black victims of lynching in the United States. It is intended to focus on and acknowledge past racial terrorism and advocate for social justice in America. Founded by the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative, it opened in downtown Montgomery, Alabama on April 26, 2018.
The Rosa Parks Museum is located on the Troy University at Montgomery satellite campus, in Montgomery, Alabama. It has information, exhibits, and some artifacts from the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. This museum is named after civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who is known for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person on a city bus.
Anarcha Westcott was an enslaved woman who underwent a series of painful experimental surgical procedures conducted by physician J. Marion Sims, without the use of anesthesia, to treat a combination of vesicovaginal fistula and rectovaginal fistula. Sims's medical experimentation with Anarcha and other enslaved women, and its role in the development of modern gynaecology, has generated controversy among medical historians.
Overlooked No More is a recurring feature in the obituary section of The New York Times, which honors "remarkable people" whose deaths had been overlooked by editors of that section since its creation in 1851. The feature was introduced on March 8, 2018, for International Women's Day, where the Times published fifteen obituaries of such "overlooked" women, and has since become a weekly feature in the paper.
J.C. Hallman is an American author, essayist, and researcher. His work has been widely published in Harper's, GQ, The Baffler, Tin House Magazine, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He is the author of six books, and his nonfiction combines memoir, history, journalism, and travelogue, including the highly acclaimed B & Me: A True Story of Literary Arousal, a book about love, literature, and modern life.
The Mothers of Gynecology Movement sprang out of criticism of 19th century gynecologist J. Marion Sims' experimental surgeries on enslaved women who were unable to consent to their surgeries. Their surgeries were often performed without anesthesia. His work has been described in the late 20th century as an example of racism in the medical profession. Though Sims had many patients, there are only three known patients of his: Anarcha Westcott, and two lesser known women, Lucy and Betsey, which have been described as the "mothers of gynecology" in the United States, to demonstrate the contributions of their experiences to modern medicine.
The Mothers of Gynecology Monument by Michelle Browder was unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 24, 2021. It is located at 17 Mildred Street, near the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and is 15 feet (4.6 m) high. The statues depict Anarcha Westcott, Betsey, and Lucy, three enslaved women who were patients of controversial doctor and "father of gynecology" J. Marion Sims, whose office was nearby. The statues were made from discarded metal objects—the artist asked for contributions from the public—"to symbolize how Black women have been treated and to demonstrate the beauty in the broken and discarded."
Michelle Miller Odinet is an American lawyer who was elected as a Lafayette, Louisiana City Court Judge in November 2020. Odinet was previously an assistant district attorney in New Orleans and Lafayette and a public defender. She resigned from her judgeship on December 31, 2021, days after a video surfaced of her repeatedly using a racial slur.
Ashley Michelle Jones is a poet, instructor of creative writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and the first Black Poet Laureate of Alabama (2022-2026) and the youngest person to hold this position. Her works deal with race and history inspired by Alabama's historical enslavement of Black men and women in the Deep South. She is the author of ‘’Magic City Gospel", ‘’dark//thing’’, and ‘’Reparations Now!’’
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