This session explores the historical intersections of race, medicine, policing, and public health, revealing how state violence against Black communities has been justified, medicalized, and institutionalized. Across different historical moments, state actors—including law enforcement, medical professionals, and public health officials—have leveraged medico-legal frameworks to pathologize Black victims, deflect accountability for police violence, and impose social control under the guise of care. The panelists analyze how these processes unfolded in distinct yet interconnected contexts: through legal procedures that whitewashed police killings, the criminalization of Black respiratory health, and the rise of violence epidemiology as a public health science.

The first paper, "Ending the Cycle: Unjust Inquests and the Laundering of Police Homicides in Black Milwaukee," by Dr. Will Tchakirides, investigates the role of medico-legal procedure in exonerating police officers responsible for the deaths of Black Milwaukeeans during the Black Power era. Rather than prosecuting officers, district attorneys and medical examiners framed police homicides as medical incidents or justified them through forensic testimony, denying Black families justice. Investigations not only obscured police culpability but also functioned as tools to temper Black dissent and contain political insurgencies against state violence. However, Black activists resisted, using legal challenges, protests, and public advocacy to expose these institutional failures and demand accountability.

The second paper, "Criminalizing Breath: Asthma, Institutionalization, and the Policing of Black Health," by Dr. Ijeoma Kola, examines how Black breathlessness was medicalized and criminalized in the late twentieth century. As asthma rates in Black urban communities surged, medical professionals reframed the disease as psychosomatic—a manifestation of emotional instability rather than a structural public health crisis. This racialized medical discourse had fatal consequences in carceral settings, where Black prisoners were denied treatment, and in the broader social welfare system, where Black children with asthma were institutionalized in state-run facilities.

The third paper. "Southern Roots: How Youth Violence Became a Public Health Menace," by Ph.D. Candidate Geremy Lowe, explores the foundational role of the Atlanta Missing and Murdered Children cases (1979–1981) in shaping violence epidemiology. The involvement of CDC epidemiologists in analyzing patterns of youth violence marked a turning point in public health, legitimizing the study of violence as a preventable epidemic. However, while violence epidemiology offered a new framework for addressing harm, it also reinforced racialized perceptions of youth violence in Black communities, influencing policies that emphasized surveillance and policing rather than structural solutions.

This session interrogates how medicine and public health have been mobilized to rationalize racialized state violence while highlighting the enduring resistance of Black communities against these injustices. By bringing these histories into conversation, this panel demonstrates the urgent need for historical analysis to inform contemporary racial and health justice struggles.