CBH Talk | The Birth of Identity: Race, Racism, and Personhood in New York City Health Records
This program is offered in partnership with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, part of its 220th anniversary celebration.
Founded in 1805 during a yellow fever epidemic, the New York City Health Department began recording births and deaths in 1847—a foundational public health function. These earliest records, however, did not recognize personhood in the way we understand it today; they documented the births of children to enslaved mothers as property, not as individuals.
Over time, the information captured in birth records—particularly the recording of race, which began in the 1850s—has evolved significantly, reflecting shifting societal norms and values. These documents - which are held in the Municipal Library, Archives and Record Center - serve as a lens through which we can examine questions of identity, personhood, racism, and power across New York City’s history.
Join us for a panel discussion, moderated by Acting City Health Commissioner Dr. Michelle Morse, that brings together a distinguished group of experts in law, archives, and public health to explore the profound implications of New York City's birth records. Panelists, including Kenneth R. Cobb, Assistant Commissioner, NYC Department of Records & Information Services; Muriel Silin, Senior Director of the Office of Quality Improvement at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Bureau of Vital Statistics; and Naomi Mezey, Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Law and Culture at Georgetown Law, will discuss how and why births have been documented over time, how racial categorization on birth certificates has changed, and the lasting legal and health consequences of these practices.
Together, they will illuminate how these records reveal both the city’s legacy—and its present-day realities.
Pictured above: Photo taken at the NYC Department of Records & information Sevices (DORIS) depicting cover of book containing Kings County slave and school records.
PARTICIPANTS
Kenneth R. Cobb is Assistant Commissioner, NYC Department of Records & Information Services. Cobb has been associated with the Department of Records & Information Services (DORIS) for more than 45 years. He served as Director of the Municipal Archives from 1990 to 2005 when he was appointed Assistant Commissioner at DORIS. Cobb received an M.A. in American History at Columbia University in 1978. In 2018 he received the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York outstanding Archival Achievement award, and in 2023 he won a Sloan Public Service Award. Cobb is a native of Poughkeepsie, New York.
DORIS preserves and provides access to the historical and contemporary records of New York City government. The Records Management Division services 65 government entities. Established in 1913, the Municipal Library maintains a collection of more than 400,000 publications and reports. The Municipal Archives is one of the largest archival repositories in North America housing more than 250,000 cubic feet of world-class historical records dating back to the 1600s.
Naomi Mezey is the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Law and Culture at Georgetown Law, where she has taught since 1998. Mezey’s interdisciplinary scholarship brings together law and cultural studies to focus on the legal regulation of sexual, gender, racial, and national identities. She also writes about film and visuality, cultural property, maternalism, bisexuality, legal violence, and sovereignty.
At Georgetown, Mezey received the Frank F. Flegal Faculty Teaching Award, served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and was Faculty Co-Director of the Center for Transnational Legal Studies in London. She is faculty co-chair and co-founder of the Georgetown Gender+ Justice Initiative, a university-wide center supporting research and community engagement on intersectional issues of gender, racial, and economic justice. She serves on the Organizing Committee of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities and is Secretary and co-convenor of the Georgetown, USC, UCLA, Penn & Stanford Law & Humanities Interdisciplinary Workshop.
Mezey earned a B.A. from Wesleyan University, a M.A. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. Mezey served as a law clerk for Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Dr. Michelle Morse is the Acting Health Commissioner and Chief Medical Officer of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC Health). She leads the agency’s work in bridging public health and health care to reduce health inequities and serves as a key liaison to clinicians and clinical leaders across New York City. She previously served as Deputy Commissioner for the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness where she led place-based and cross-cutting health equity programs.
Dr. Morse is an internal medicine and public health doctor who works to achieve health equity through global solidarity, social medicine and anti-racism education, and activism. She is a general internal medicine physician, part-time hospitalist at Kings County Hospital, Co-Founder of EqualHealth, and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Morse’s continued commitment to advancing health equity and justice is informed by her experience in leadership roles as Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Heath, as a Soros Equality Fellow launching a global Campaign Against Racism and as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy fellow with the Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2024, Dr. Morse was named a TIME100Next honoree.
Muriel Silin, MPH, is the Senior Director of the Office of Quality Improvement at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Bureau of Vital Statistics. She has more than three decades of experience in public health data systems, quality assurance, and surveillance, with a career spanning from field-based tuberculosis investigations to citywide data modernization initiatives.
Muriel has led teams in improving data quality, timeliness, and provider training for vital statistics data. She has collaborated extensively with the CDC and other stakeholders to strengthen reporting systems and public health response. She previously participated in a workgroup at the NYC Health Department to create a standard approach to collection of race and ethnicity data. Her published work includes research on TB epidemiology, reporting timeliness, and surveillance methods.
Muriel earned her Master of Public Health in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University and her Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from SUNY College at Buffalo. She uses her technical expertise with strategic leadership to ensure that public health data drives informed decision-making.
