Historical Moment: New Orleans swears in first Black coroner

7th May 2018   ·   0 Comments

By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer

There’s something to be said for savoring your accomplishments and taking a breather to reflect on the making of history. But after a few moments of that, well, you’ve got to get to work.

That’s Dr. Dwight McKenna’s mindset as he sits in his modest family practice office on Gentilly Boulevard and prepares for what’s ahead.

After several decades as a physician in private practice, McKenna in October was elected as the next Orleans Parish coroner on his third try. With the victory, McKenna became the first African-American medical physician to be elected to a coroner position in American history. While other African Americans had been appointed to such posts, never has a Black medical doctor been elevated to the job by the electoral process. Since October, McKenna has taken a moment here and there to reflect on his role as a barrier-breaker.

“You don’t start out in life thinking you’ll be a trailblazer,” he said. “I’m amazed that I was the first to accomplish that feat, but I understand the importance and significance of it. For me, it’s a humbling experience more than anything.”

When reflecting on his place in history, McKenna said he’s aware that many of the causes for such lamentable aspects of the past are still very much alive in the present. But, he added, striving against challenges is in his nature – and the nature of African Americans overall.

“It speaks to the history of racism in America for all these years,” he said of the lack of diversity in the coroner position.

“America has not always been a bastion of equality for African Americans,” he added. “But we keep striving. That’s why we have to keep at it. We define our legacy through our struggles. We need to write our own story, not let others define us.”

But McKenna is making sure to not spend too much time meditating on the nature of accomplishment – instead, he plans to hit the ground running with an ambitious agenda aimed at engaging the public, conducting outreach to citizens, and working especially to address the many challenges facing the youth of New Orleans.

That effort includes more than simply declaring causes of death for those who have passed, he said. It also involves attending to the needs of the living, including stemming youth violence, drug and alcohol abuse and deaths, and clarifying the coroner’s role in dealing with mental illness.

With the drug issue specifically, McKenna wants to zero in on the opioid crisis, as well as the potential dangers of mixing intoxicants without fully knowing the harm that such blending could do.

“I’m ready to get started,” McKenna said. “I like to be proactive in the community. Last year (in the city) we had more deaths from drug overdose than violent trauma.

“It’s important for the young people to know about drugs, and I want to be proactive in raising awareness. I want to start getting into the schools and informing youth about it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

McKenna believes his past experience as a member of the Orleans Parish School Board provides him with an especially strong insight into the lives and needs of the youth of the community. If his tenure on the school board taught him anything, he said, it was that youngsters react most strongly to direct, personal engagement.

“We need to interact with youth,” he said. “We need to teach conflict resolution, we need to work on diversion [from drugs and violence]. We need to talk about all these things, and hopefully I can make a difference. It won’t happen overnight, but if we’re proactive and not reactive, we can do it.”

Then there’s the challenge of providing swift, certain comfort and peace of mind to those who have lost loved ones. McKenna said he will strive to determine causes of death and confirm diagnoses as swiftly, efficiently and accurately as possible – a service that many in the minority community have said has traditionally received a lack of attention and compassion.

When causes of death are confirmed quickly and correctly, his office can then work toward addressing the reasons for them – whether it be traumas like drugs, violence and murder, or simply natural causes.

“New Orleans was plagued for several years by questionable diagnoses,” McKenna said. “That will come to an end when I’m inaugurated.”

Some say that neglect and sloppiness can create and has often created a rift between minority residents and public office. That distrust can be quite deep, and having a person of color as coroner could help mend those divisions.

“There have been some historic problems with the coroner’s office with respect to Black citizens,” said Raphael Cassimere Jr., Seraphia D. Leyda professor emeritus of history at UNO.

“There have been past instances when controversial homicides, especially at the hands of law enforcement officers, have been classified ‘justifiable’ when evidence suggests otherwise. An African-American coroner could bring a level of racial sensitivity which should provide a greater sense of reliability to these inquiries.”

“The role of the coroner is very engaged – politically, socially and economically – especially in New Orleans,” said Dr. Brian Turner, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at Xavier University. “The coroner has had to be someone who was viable to all of the issues that an elected official would have to impact.

“The coroner makes dynamic and significant decisions related to how deaths are investigated, the cause of death, mental health hospitalizations and care, and ultimately the financing of various community medical issues that the coroner oversees.”

From the city’s yellow fever outbreaks in the 19th century, up through the overwhelming tragedies brought by Hurricane Katrina, the coroner’s office has, at times, been placed under severe pressure.

The challenges introduced by Katrina are especially fresh in the city’s memory – challenges that have intricately involved the coroner. In addition to the hundreds of deaths directly caused by the storm, in the wake of Katrina the city’s suicide rate tripled.

Entangled inextricably in those challenges were the undeniable factors of race, class and economics. Now, nearly 13 years after Katrina swept through, observers say McKenna has a unique chance to build on the successes of past coroners while also, as a person of color himself, addressing many of the problems and challenges unique to the city’s minority communities.

“It is certainly an historic step because coroner was the last city-wide elected office that has never had an African-American incumbent,” said Dr. Robert A. Collins, professor of urban studies and public policy at Dillard University.

McKenna’s predecessors have, however, provided him with a solid structural, institutional and fiscal foundation on which to build. After decades — if not centuries — of questionable effectiveness and, at times, societal and cultural myopia and unresponsiveness, the Orleans Parish coroner’s office has made significant strides.

Much of that progress has come under McKenna’s predecessor, Dr. Jeffrey Rouse.

“I have sat with Dr. McKenna for an extended time,” Rouse said in a statement announcing his withdrawal from election, “and I am convinced that his plan for a more public role for the Coroner’s office in health education and violence prevention is the logical next step for the evolution of this office, now that a strong team is in place and internal processes here have been updated.”

With that endorsement and assistance in hand, McKenna said he is ready to hit the ground running in his new position. McKenna acknowledges that he’s had obstacles in the past that might have caused some voters to shy away from him – specifically, he spent nine months in federal prison for tax evasion, although he has said in the past that he didn’t intentionally mean to withhold taxes. He was also forced off the school board and had his medical license placed on probation.

But McKenna said he has placed his challenges in the past and is only ready to move forward. He believes he can win doubters over by being proactive with his efforts and being present in the community.

And, as Collins said, “As long as [McKenna] simply runs an efficient office and provides good public service to the citizens, his enemies will have no grounds to attack him and he should be able to avoid most public criticism.”

“I’ve been humbled by the outpouring of support from the community,” he said. “For me,” he added, “the coroner’s office is an extension of my work in the community. I want to use the office as an instrument of change and prevention as a man who has done his duty in dealing with loss of life. I’m trying to not be just a reporter of death, but also a preserver of life.”

This article originally published in the May 7, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.