Funerals Remain a Segregated Business in the South
When a black person dies in one of the rural counties around here, chances are the body will end up in the hands of Charles Menendez.
First, he offers a little prayer and asks the person on the table to help him make the job go smoothly. Then he gets down to work, embalming the body like an old-school craftsman.
“You don’t want the family to touch Grandmama and feel it cold and hard,” he said. “You want flexibility in the skin. The idea is to leave a good memory picture for them.”
All of his cases are black. They always have been. If Sunday remains the most segregated day in the South, funerals remain the most segregated business. In the same way that generations of tradition dictate the churches people attend, the races tend to bury their own.
“That’s the way it has always been here in the rural areas,” Mr. Menendez said. “White funeral homes employ white embalmers, and black funeral homes employ black embalmers. That’s the South.”