In death, it is said, all men are equal. If that’s the case, then why do the
races tend to contract with their own kind when it comes to making those final
arrangements?
A quick scan of the local obituary page shows that funeral services for
African Americans tend to be handled by King Tears Mortuary, Fuller-Sheffield
Funeral Services, or Rest Haven, all businesses either owned or operated by
blacks. Hispanics usually are cared for by Angel Funeral Home or Mission
Funeral Home, which are owned by Hispanics. Whites, more often than not, go
elsewhere.
It’s not a matter of segregation, says the Rev. J. Charles Merrill, senior
pastor of University United Methodist Church. He says people usually choose a
funeral home that’s nearest their church or in the neighborhood where they
live. Since many blacks and Hispanics still tend to live in predominantly black
or Hispanic neighborhoods, they patronize the neighborhood undertaker.
“It’s strictly a matter of culture and geography,” Merrill says. “I think what
drives that more than anything else is location and tradition. Tradition is
very strong in the way people choose funeral homes. The good ones get their
business by referral and that word really gets around congregations.” Funeral
homes that serve a community well establish a reputation among the people,
Merrill says. If a funeral home did a good job on your grandfather, he says,
you’d probably consider taking your father there, too.
But if it’s mostly tradition that leads a person to a certain funeral home
today, that wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t too long ago that segregation was
a matter of practice, if not law, and white funeral homes were off-limits to
African Americans and Hispanics.
“Whites would not embalm or handle blacks, so that’s why they formed their own
funeral homes,” says Gloria McDade, administrative assistant for King Tears
Mortuary. “It was the same way with Hispanics; the whites would not handle
them. So at need, you take care of your own.” She also recalls that in smaller
cities, with no minority-owned funeral homes, morticians would use a separate
area of their shops for embalming blacks and Hispanics.
Bryan DeLeon, funeral director at Angel Funeral Home, says his business was
founded in 1962 as an offshoot of Cook-Walden Funeral Home. Originally, Angel
was called Cook Chapel of Roses and was located on East Second Street.
“It was made basically to keep the Hispanics on their side of the town and
because the racism was pretty prevalent,” DeLeon says. “The intermixing of the
two individual races, the whites and Hispanics — you didn’t want that. If you
were Cook-Walden, you really didn’t want that. You wanted them to have their
own facility, but at the same time you wanted to provide those services to the
Hispanic community.”
Former Cook-Walden owner Charles Walden says that Cook-Walden always
provided service to all races, but he confirms that Cook-Walden originally
hired Joe Davilla to run Cook Chapel of Roses. Davilla eventually bought the
funeral home and later sold it to Angel, which moved it from East Austin to
South Congress Avenue in 1976, and then to South First Street earlier this
year.
But things have changed, and both DeLeon and McDade note that their funeral
homes are handling more whites, and that others are taking more minorities. “As
time’s gone by, we’ve been doing a lot of white services more and more each
year, and also we’re finding that Cook-Walden is doing a lot of black services
now,” she says. “But there were a lot before who wouldn’t allow a black body in
their embalming room.”
Billy Peel, owner of Austin-Peel & Son Funeral Home, says he has seen an
increase of minority customers at white-owned funeral homes over the past 30
years. He attributes that partially to the changing demographics of Austin’s
neighborhoods and the fact that races are less likely now to live in certain
parts of town than a few decades ago. “People die, we treat them,” Peel says.
“They’re people and we do what we need to do, regardless of who they are.”
But although the segregation has ended, many African Americans still “feel
more comfortable” with a black-owned funeral home, McDade says. Similarly,
DeLeon cites a “cultural bias” that often leads Hispanics to Hispanic-owned
funeral homes. “I think there are still differences between the Hispanic
culture and the black culture and the Anglo culture,” he says. “Sometimes I get
a little uncomfortable talking about race and culture as being sort of the
same, but I think that there are just different ways that Hispanics will do
things. While the Catholic faith is the same for anybody, there are certain
elements of the Catholic faith for Hispanics — for example, the Lady of
Guadalupe — that are different…. It’s a lot of different things and it’s
kind of hard to explain unless you’ve lived it. But I can see, because I’ve
helped other funeral homes, that there are cultural differences. Like I said, I
think it’s just a bias where you think that if you’re Hispanic, that funeral
home will somehow be more readily able to serve you with your culture in mind
because you’ve lived that same reality.” — Karl Pallmeyer
This article appears in March 28 • 1997 and March 28 • 1997 (Cover).