Long before the forced journey across the Atlantic, African societies held deeply spiritual understandings of death and burial.
Among the Akan of West Africa, the concept of abusua pa—“good family”—meant funerals were communal rituals affirming one’s place in the kinship network.
In Yoruba traditions, death was not the end but a homegoing to join the ancestors.
Rituals of libation, drumming, singing and masquerade—such as the Egungun festival—connected the living to the unseen, reminding communities that to deny a proper burial was to rob someone of dignity and break the link with ancestors.
These worldviews crossed the Atlantic with enslaved Africans, carried in memory, song, and ritual. Even under slavery’s violence, these beliefs shaped Black mourning practices in America. Enslaved people were often buried in unmarked graves without ceremony—but they resisted through hush harbor funerals: secret night gatherings where drumming, libation, Christian prayer and resurrection hope intertwined.
These acts declared that Black life was sacred, even when disposability was imposed upon it. The story of the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37) resonates deeply: Even when scattered, the Spirit breathes life and dignity into bones the empire would discard.
After Emancipation, death care became one of the few industries open to Black entrepreneurship. Burial societies, life insurance cooperatives and independent undertakers emerged during Reconstruction and Jim Crow, ensuring Black families could bury loved ones with dignity. Funeral directors became respected community leaders, creating jobs, circulating wealth and modeling resilience.
By the early 20th century, these institutions anchored civic life—financing schools, sponsoring newspapers and investing in Black-owned banks. Their paradox was apparent: Centered on death, they nourished life—echoing Jesus’s words in John that the grain must fall and die to bear fruit.
During the Civil Rights era, funeral homes transformed grief into a form of protest. Collins Funeral Home in Jackson (an NAACP hub), R.S. Lewis & Sons in Memphis (organizing MLK’s procession), and Mamie Till-Mobley’s open-casket insistence for Emmett Till revealed white supremacy’s violence while preserving victim dignity. Death itself became a protest, echoing the crucifixion: the empire intended shame, but these funeral homes remade it into a resurrection of Black hope.
That same struggle continues today—albeit in new forms. President Trump’s recent executive order, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” seeks to criminalize homelessness by penalizing behaviors like “urban camping,” “loitering,” and “squatting” while defunding harm reduction and “Housing First” programs. It promotes forced institutionalization in mental health or substance abuse facilities as a “solution” for the unhoused. Public commentary frames his homelessness approach as harsh but not novel, noting some blue states use similar measures—but these practices deepen marginalization.
In Washington, D.C., Trump has ordered the immediate removal of homeless individuals, relocating them “far from the capital,” deploying the National Guard and nationalizing the D.C. police. His actions replicate in Chicago and other cities, stripping local authority and public safety models in favor of militarized, punitive responses—though crime rates have actually fallen sharply.
These policies echo older systems of brutality. They criminalize poverty and homelessness under the guise of public safety—echoing vagrancy laws rooted in post–Civil War Black Codes. Grants Pass v. Johnson, a 2024 Supreme Court decision, upheld anti-camping laws, further emboldening jurisdictions to forcibly clear encampments, often without providing sufficient alternatives.
Evidence shows these interventions—sweeps, forced placement, fines—worsen outcomes. They increase mortality, erode trust in service providers and destabilize already vulnerable people.
As the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas reminds us, real divine religion calls us to care for the vulnerable, not criminalize them. The punitive measures of Trump’s “fake war on crime” threaten the very notion that unhoused lives—and deaths—deserve dignity.
Still, Black funeral homes remain critical beacons. They continue to stand as guardians of memory and compassion, offering dignity even when society rejects it. Their history reminds us that grief is not neutral. It can be harnessed to enforce fear—or, through collective courage, turned into resistance.
The same faith that transformed loss into protest during Emmett Till’s funeral now implores us to recognize the funerals of homeless or incarcerated individuals as indictments of political systems that value profit over people.
This fight isn’t only about death, but how we live—and how we honor life’s inherent worth. Housing, healthcare and safety are not luxuries but human rights deeply tied to how we remember and dignify each life. Revelation’s promise—that God will wipe away tears, end mourning and death—confronts us: If heaven is defined by dignity, why should earth abandon it?
From ancestral African rites to hush-harbor burials, funeral homes as Civil Rights resistance, and now under Trump’s authoritarian criminalization, Black funeral homes have remained guardians of memory and midwives of liberation. Where the state seeks to control death and ignore the poor, these institutions affirm life’s sanctity.
As Paul declares in 1 Corinthians: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
We continue to say:
In sacred hush, the drums of Africa call…
Through chains and graves, the ancestors remain.
Though bodies buried deep beneath the pall,
Their spirits rise, defying death’s domain.In hidden groves, where mourners dared to sing,
A hush-harbor became a holy ground.
From sorrow’s seed, resistance took its wing,
And whispered hope where none was thought to sound.The undertaker’s hands became a shield,
A steward of the memory and flame.
In courts of grief, the truth could not be sealed;
Each funeral spoke of the empire’s shame.So still they march, the dead in endless throng,
Their silence turned to justice, loud and strong.
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Rev. Keion Jackson is a minister, an Episcopalian and an Independent Liturgical Theologian.
