Abstract
Black Deaths Matter: Earning the Right to Live—Death and the African-American Funeral Home recounts the history of black funeral homes in the United States and their role in demanding justice for bodies of color and the black community. Through funeral pageantry and vigilant support for local communities, the African American funeral home has been central to ensuring that not only do Black Lives Matter, but black deaths count and are visible to the larger community. This paper is a slightly expanded version of the plenary talk for the Centre for Death and Society’s Politics of Death Conference at the University of Bath on 9 June 2018. This research and talk were supported by The Louisville Institute under the Project Grant for Researchers.
Highlights
At 10:22 a.m. on Sunday, 15 September 1963, a bomb exploded in the basement of the SixteenthStreet Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama
The story of the African American funeral home is a story of resilience, of strength, and of power, fortunes, and identity formations, as the funeral home became a place of fortitude, character, and community
It was no different in the African American community, where cemeteries were purchased for the burial of African Americans,12 and the rise of both the insurance business and the African American funeral home business were some of the few businesses that black Americans were allowed to own and run
Summary
At 10:22 a.m. on Sunday, 15 September 1963, a bomb exploded in the basement of the Sixteenth. Religions 2020, 11, 390 were the only casualties in the Birmingham bombing Their bodies sealed tightly in closed caskets for their burials symbolized a refusal to place black bodies on display. Black bodies—lynched, mutilated, chopped up, on display and serving as testimony and witness to injustice and cruelty—and, often the spectacle and specter of white violence inflicted on bodies of color—were hidden in closed caskets, mourned by their families as little girls and not, like Emmett Till, as symbols. The story of the African American funeral home is a story of resilience, of strength, and of power, fortunes, and identity formations, as the funeral home became a place of fortitude, character, and community
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