Anarcha, Betsy, Lucy: The Unsung Mothers Bridging Black History and Women’s History

February is wrapped up, and March has rolled in, so I’m sitting here thinking about Black History Month bleeding right into Women’s History Month. And damn, if there’s a story that ties those two together like a gut punch, it’s Anarcha’s. You haven’t heard of her? Neither had I until I dug in, and now I can’t shake her—or Betsy and Lucy, the other two women who deserve way more than a footnote.

Anarcha was enslaved, stuck in Alabama in the 1840s, and handed over to this creep, J. Marion Sims, a doctor obsessed with fixing fistulas—nasty childbirth injuries that left women like her leaking and shunned. She wasn’t just a patient; she was his guinea pig. Thirty surgeries. No anesthesia. Let that sink in—30 times he cut into her, while she screamed, and he just… kept going. Betsy and Lucy got the same hellish deal. These women didn’t sign up to be heroes; they were forced into it, their bodies used to crack open the secrets of modern gynecology. Sims got the statues and the fancy “father of gynecology” title. Anarcha? She got sent back to the plantation, patched up but still owned.

Black History Month just spent February reminding us how deep the roots of resilience run, and now Women’s History Month is here to shine a light on the women who carried way more than their share. Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy—they’re the real Mothers of Gynecology, not Sims. Their pain built something that saves lives today, and they didn’t even get a thank-you. February 28 and March 1, those crossover days, feel like the perfect time to scream their names louder than ever. They were Black, they were women, and they were unstoppable, even when the world tried to break them.

So here’s my tribute: Anarcha, Betsy, Lucy—you’re not forgotten. You’re the heartbeat of both these months, a reminder that history isn’t just victories; it’s the scars that got us here. Let’s keep telling their story, messy and real, because they deserve it.