A Louisiana cemetery told the family of a Black deputy he couldn't be buried there because it was only for White people.

Robert59

Robert59

Well-known Member
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Now I live in Tennesee. Did live in Michigan.
When Karla Semien went to a cemetery to pick out a plot where her late husband would be buried, it was as if she'd stepped back into the 1950's.
Her husband Darrell Semien, a sheriff's deputy for Allen Parish, Louisiana, died on January 24 after being diagnosed with cancer in December, CNN affiliate KPLC reported.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/us/louisiana-cemetery-whites-only-trnd/index.html
 

When I was a child in the fifties and on the way to see grandma, we stopped at a gas station. The rest room had a sign ‘whites only no blacks”. The rest room was filthy. So I asked my mom, “is that because its so dirty blacks won’t use it?”

SLAP, shut up.

I would not use a whites only cementry, probably some thing wrong with it.
 

I got a plot in a nearby cemetery that is free for veterans. ( I'll be cheap even to the grave) The person there showed me the old written agreement and it was once no blacks also.
 
Nosy Bee-54 said:
Nothing new and it didn't start in the 1950's. It goes all the way back to 1619. It is embedded in the DNA of America.
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rgp said:
While I agree it is somewhat archaic in these modern times but ... Is a cemetery not private property ? a private business ? Should the owner not be permitted to do business with whom ever they choose to ? IMO, they should .
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I'm gonna stay out of this one. And I will be cremated and my ashes scattered in the ocean.
 
Just another example of how much racism still exists in America. Why the hell would it matter if a body in the ground is white, black, purple or green?! This is the epitome of stupidity! My family has a small cemetery behind a church in S.C. I never lived down there but my birth mother was taken back down south and was buried there 63 years ago.
 
OneEyedDiva said:
Just another example of how much racism still exists in America. Why the hell would it matter if a body in the ground is white, black, purple or green?! This is the epitome of stupidity! My family has a small cemetery behind a church in S.C. I never lived down there but my birth mother was taken back down south and was buried there 63 years ago.
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Fully agree @OneEyedDiva it always amazed me where I grew up in New South Wales
most of my deceased family members are buried in the catholic section of the huge cemetery
Ive Asked many time why the difference ? what religion they were I don't think any of them are going to raise from the dead and start fighting over their religious beliefs

I believe it’s still the same there cause my aunt recently passed and she didn’t want to be in the catholic cemetery with her late husband ,she got her wishes
 
The space between the headstones is the site in Belfast City Cemetery where an underground wall was built to divide Protestants and Catholics even in death. Before the cemetery opened, a nine-foot deep underground wall was meant to divide consecrated and non-consecrated ground and separate the Catholic and Protestant sections of the new graveyard. However, the ground was never used for Catholic burials because of a dispute between Belfast Corporation and Bishop Dorrian over who had ultimate burial rights for those buried in the Catholic section. The dispute was eventually resolved when the Corporation bought from Bishop Dorrian, for £4,000, the right to bury Protestants in the ground allocated for Catholic burials. The bishop then purchased, for a cost of £4,200, 15 acres of land on the other side of Falls Road for a new Catholic cemetery.
 
Although it does seem a different matter when cemeteries are willing to bury only people of a particular religion. Probably most cemeteries are connected with places of worship, or religious organizations, and I don't think it's ever a civil rights issue for a cemetery to ask if the deceased was a practitioner of a particular religion.

I never really thought about it one way or another, but you can usually tell what a person's religion was by the name of the cemetery he/she is buried in. And I think the cemeteries can, and do, turn people away based on religion.
 

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