Just wondering if that was the norm in some other places. The black one is owned and operated by black people and the white by whites( whatever white may be).
I have never heard of a black person being interred by the white owned funeral home here or vice versa. We are a small town and don’t have any other ethnic groups here other than an occasional mexican american.
Anyway I was wondering to myself what the difference would be anway. I’m sure it doesn’t matter to the deceased.
These are the things I pontificate whilst setting around with too much time on my hands.
We have the same thing here. There are actually quite a few black-owned and operated funeral homes, and for the most part, everything is kind of segregated. Of course, there are only two white-owned/operated funeral homes, but they have several offices.
I used to live 3 doors down from a funeral home. Coffin delivery day was always a creepy day in the neighborhood. A huge 18-wheeler would pull up, and they would just start unloading coffins. It’s one of those things you never think about, I guess, but I used to watch it with complete fascination.
I think the black home and white home are probably just tradition at this point. People keep going to the funeral home that they’ve dealt with in the past because it’s safe and comfortable and, quite frankly, when it comes time to use those services, most people aren’t in the mood to comparison shop or experiment.
This is what Ive seen as well, because different religions may have different requirement for preparing the dead. I also know of some funeral homes with a more secular slant – and it makes no difference what race you belong to or what hue your skin may be, the will cater to your needs.
My family has used “transfer services” not funeral homes and cremation. A transfer service is exactly what it sounds like: They pick up the body from the morgue and transport it to crematorium. There still is a funeral director who helps to organize the opening and closing of the grave site, helps you choose and urn, and will help take care of all the stuff that you’re too emotionally whigged out to do yourself (getting a chapel or other venue for the funeral or memorial service, taking care of paperwork etc.)
There’s no viewing of the body (our family is not comfortable with that) and no big, expensive, polished satin-lined, cushy coffin.
It is beautifuly simple: A dignified service and then one hell of a celebration of your life.
We probably have that in my town. Unspoken rule, of course, and only because families always go back to the same funeral director. Although the only differences I note are that we have an Italian funeral home, an Irish funeral home, a German one, etc. (of course, I mean Italian-American, oh you get the idea)
Decades ago, in the time of Jim Crow and segregation, blacks could not be prepared for burial along with whites in a funeral home. This required “Black Only” funeral parlors, just as there were segregated water fountains, bathrooms, etc. This form of segregation was actually somewhat beneficial to blacks, however, since it allowed black entrepreneurs in otherwise segregated regions to own and operate a potentially highly profitable business; the wealthiest blacks in many communities were the ones who owned these funeral homes.
That they continue to be self-segregated today is due to tradition, I would guess. Funeral homes categorized by religion or ethnicity are an entirely separate matter though.
In my town we have racially separated funeral homes, barber shops, churches, and to some extent, grocery & convenience stores.
Does this mean anything? I don’t think so. Everyone gets along pretty much ok, and I can’t recall the last time we had a disturbance caused by race.
By the same token, I don’t believe we have ever had any heterosexual/homosexual fights or problems, and everyone seems to get along on that level too.
We live side by side, help each other when we are broken down on the side of the road, eat at each other’s homes, volunteer together, and go to the same schools.
Perhaps if the folks in the more metropolitan areas would take our “backwoods” example- quit waving flags, making issues out of every little thing, and just leave each other the hell alone- the world would be a better place.
I went to a wake in an NJ town that was so, how to put it, rich upper-crust WASPy (which I am not, it was a guy I knew from work), that they didn’t even call it a funeral home. It was the (Insert town name here) Colonial Home.
That kind of euphemism kinda blew my mind. Still does.
That’s not at all surprising. Funeral homes, for the reasons peepthis described. Churches? Even in the North, the social universes of blacks and whites were usually almost completely separate until the past few decades, and churches reflect that still, unfortunately. Barbershops and beauty parlors in small towns are as much a social hub as they are a business, and so the same thing holds there.
I’m kinda puzzled by the “quit waving flags” lesson as rural America’s recipe for harmony, Spit. Aside from the Stars and Stripes, of course, there’s one flag that I was accustomed to seeing a great deal of in rural America, especially in the South of course.
A number of my family and friends of my parents were all – I don’t know a good word for it – “processed through” an Irish funeral home in Chicago. Every neme I ever saw on the docket(?) was Irish. There was also a Polish funeral home nearby that worked the same way.
I don’t have any idea how common this is, other than in the posts here. However, it is a long standing situation.
In my home town we had a separate mortuary and cemetary for Catholics. I never thought about it at the time, but there were two black families (Negoes in those days) in town and I suppose they, and Jews, would had to have gone to Sioux City.
